Political Comedy Shows and Knowledge About Primary Campaigns: The Moderating Effects of Age and Education

Abstract

Humorous coverage of political objects (e.g., political figures, issues, and events) is one of the central themes of political comedy shows (e.g., Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). This is particularly true during presidential campaigns. Many people, particularly young people, claim to watch such programs regularly. This study examined the relationship between exposure to political comedy shows and political knowledge during the 2000 and 2004 primary campaigns. The results indicated that age and education had modest interactive effects with such exposure on campaign knowledge.

Notes

¹Alternatively, one could argue that watching political comedy shows mediates the relationship between age and political knowledge because age exists theoretically prior to exposure to comedy shows. This claim is less compelling given that empirical evidence indicates that age is positively related to political knowledge (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996) and negatively associated with watching comedy shows (e.g., Young 2004a), whereas theoretical accounts suggest that watching comedy shows may be positively related to political knowledge (Baum, 2003a, 2003b; Downs, 1957; Popkin, 1994).

²I recoded all measures in this study to range from 0 to 1, with 1 indicating the maximum.

³In 2000, only half of the respondents were asked about comedy shows.

⁴The magnitudes of correlation coefficient between age and exposure to political comedy shows did not differ across years (Z = 1.95, p = .051).

^a1 for male, 0 for female.

^b1 for White, 0 for non-White.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

⁵In this study, chow tests were conducted to test whether the magnitudes of the interaction coefficients differed across samples.

⁶Given that people younger than 30 are particularly more likely to tune into political comedy shows than are older people (Pew Research Center, 2000, 2004; Young 2004a), I divided the respondents into two groups—those younger than the age of 30 and those 30 years old or older—and use the median age of each group to illustrate the interaction.

^a1 for male, 0 for female.

^b1 for White, 0 for non-White.

^c1 for Republic, 0 for otherwise.

^d1 for Democrat, 0 for otherwise.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

^a1 for male, 0 for female.

^b1 for White, 0 for non-White.

^c1 for Republic, 0 for otherwise.

^d1 for Democrat, 0 for otherwise.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

^a1 for male, 0 for female.

^b1 for White, 0 for non-White.

^c1 for Republic, 0 for otherwise.

^d1 for Democrat, 0 for otherwise.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

⁷I chose the lower and upper quintiles of education to illustrate the interaction.

⁸When I excluded political interest—which was closely related to exposure to traditional news (r = .49, p < .01)—the latter had the expected significant positive coefficient, whereas the results for the other variables in the model remained virtually the same.