Dailyshow
The Daily Show Effect
Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth
Jody Baumgartner Jonathan S. Morris
East Carolina University
American Politics Research Volume 34 Number 3 May 2006 341-367 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/1532673X05280074 http://apr.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com
We test the effects of a popular televised source of political humor for young Americans: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. We find that participants exposed to jokes about George W. Bush and John Kerry on The Daily Show tended to rate both candidates more negatively, even when controlling for partisanship and other demographic variables. Moreover, we find that viewers exhibit more cynicism toward the electoral system and the news media at large. Despite these negative reactions, viewers of The Daily Show reported increased confidence in their ability to understand the complicated world of politics. Our findings are significant in the burgeoning field of research on the effects of “soft news” on the American public. Although research indicates that soft news contributes to democratic citizenship in America by reaching out to the inattentive public, our findings indicate that The Daily Show may have more detrimental effects, driving down support for political institutions and leaders among those already inclined toward nonparticipation. Keywords: media and politics; political campaigns; The Daily Show;
infotainment; political information; young voters; political socialization
Introduction: Soft News and The Daily Show
There is some ambiguity among political communications scholars in defining soft news (Baum, 2003b; Hamilton, 2004; Patterson, 2000), but there is a consensus that soft-news programming shares certain characteristics. Compared with traditional hard news, these programs feature lower levels of public affairs information and focus more on