Stephen Colbert's Civics Lesson: How Colbert Super PAC Taught Viewers About Campaign Finance

Abstract

This study tests whether exposure to The Colbert Report influenced knowledge of super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups, and ascertains how having such knowledge influenced viewers' perceptions about the role of money in politics. Our analysis of a national random sample of adults interviewed after the 2012 presidential election found that viewing The Colbert Report both increased peoples' perception of how knowledgeable they were about super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups and increased actual knowledge of campaign finance regulation regarding these independent expenditure groups. Findings suggest that the political satirist was more successful in informing his viewers about super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups than were other types of news media. Viewing The Colbert Report also indirectly influenced how useful his audience perceived money to be in politics.

Notes

¹Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010, http://www.scribd.com/doc/25537902/Citizens-Opinion

²Speechnow v. FEC, 2010, http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation/speechnow.shtml#sc_decisions

³Federal Election Commission, News Release, July 22, 2012 http://www.fec.gov/press/press2010/20100722OpenMtng.shtml

⁴ The Colbert Report, March 10, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/377119/march-10-2011/colbert-pac-ad

⁵ The Colbert Report, March 30, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/379369/march-30-2011/colbert-pac---trevor-potter

⁶ The Colbert Report, April 14, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/382014/april-14-2011/colbert-super-pac---trevor-potter

⁷ The Colbert Report, May 11, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/386086/may-11-2011/corp-constituency---trevor-potter

⁸ The Colbert Report, May 31, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/387920/may-31-2011/fec-questions---trevor-potter

⁹ The Colbert Report, September 29, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/398530/september-29-2011/colbert-super-pac---ham-rove-s-comeback

¹⁰ The Colbert Report, September 29, 2011: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/398531/september-29-2011/colbert-super-pac---trevor-potter---stephen-s-shell-corporation

¹¹ The Colbert Report, November 12, 2012: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/421160/november-12-2012/colbert-super-pac-shh----secret-second-501c4---trevor-potter

¹²See Althaus (2012) for an excellent discussion of normative assessments in political communication.

¹³The University of Pennsylvania's Institutional Review Board approved this study as “exempt” on October 2, 2012 (protocol #816601).

¹⁴In order to meet the study's analytical goals, we employed a dual-frame, landline and cell phone sampling design. Since nearly 35% of American adults live in wireless-only households, according to a 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), sufficient representation was needed from cell phone only (CPO) households. Furthermore, a significant portion of Americans living in households with landline telephones receive all or the majority of their calls on cell phones. In short, the NHIS data suggest that somewhere between 30 and 45% of U.S. adults can no longer be reliably contacted by a landline telephone. Thus, studies seeking to represent the general public should include a significant cell phone component. For the survey used in this data, 35.7% of interviews were completed with respondents on their cell phones.

¹⁵All interviews were conducted by live interviewers using computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) software. In households reached by landline, an adult was selected at random based on age (or most recent birthday). The questionnaire was delivered in Spanish for those who selected that option. Non-responsive phone numbers were contacted up to 6 times, and in cases where initial attempts were met with soft refusal (i.e., abrupt hang-ups), refusal-conversion attempts were made. Accounting for design effects, the margin of error is +/−3.7 percent. The response rate was 10 percent. Response rate uses the standard AAPOR RR3 formula.

¹⁶We recognize the noted concerns about self-reported media measures (e.g., Prior 2009; 2012). Particularly, respondents have been shown to over-report consumption of media. Since we are looking primarily at the direct effect of media consumption on knowledge, though, over-reported media consumption would suggest that the magnitudes of the effects found in our analyses are lower than the true effects. This is because those who falsely reported consuming media would be analyzed as having consumed media, diluting the effect of those who actually consumed media.

¹⁷Respondents were asked, “During the general election campaign, where did you get most of your information about the 2012 presidential campaign online?” If respondents indicated that they do not go online for political information, they were coded as not consuming news online. Otherwise they were coded as consuming news online; 62.7% of respondents indicated consuming news online.

¹⁸Seventy-one-point-six percent of the sample reported having voted in the 2012 November general election.

¹⁹The following is the demographic breakdown of the sample: political party identification −23.0% Republican, 33.6% Democrat; political ideology (1 = very liberal; 5 = very conservative) – mean = 3.20, SD = 1.24; years of education – mean = 13.64; SD = 2.54; race −13.5% black, 13.7% Hispanic; gender −51.4% female; age – mean = 47.09, SD = 17.70.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

²⁰Due to the difference in the days per week that Colbert Report airs compared to the days per week that the other news sources air, the ranges of the scales for Colbert Report viewership and viewership of other news media differ. Colbert viewership ranges from 0–4 days (or episodes) per week and the other news media range from 0–7 days per week. The questions were deliberately asked in this fashion to be able to make the fairest comparison between exposure to Colbert Report content and exposure to content from other news sources. Since the variables were constructed this way, the coefficients of Colbert viewership and viewership of other news media within our analyses indicate the effect of one day's worth of exposure, and the F-tests test whether the effect of exposure to one day's worth of content from the Colbert Report differs from exposure to one day's worth of content from another news source. If the variables had been constructed in a fashion in which Colbert viewing and viewing of other news media were on the same scale, the comparison between Colbert Report and other news media would not have been fair.

**p < .01.

²¹An alternative model tested H5 using the Hayes (2012) PROCESS macro for SPSS, which found similar results and significant mediation using a bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bruce W. Hardy

Bruce W. Hardy (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2010) is a Senior Researcher at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include political campaigns, political advertising, knowledge acquisition, opinion formation and behavior, and emergent technologies and society.

Jeffrey A. Gottfried

Jeffrey A. Gottfried (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2012) is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, working with both the Center for the People & the Press and the Journalism Project. His research interests include political communication, election campaigns, public opinion, and the role of social media in knowledge acquisition.

Kenneth M. Winneg

Kenneth M. Winneg (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2009) is the Managing Director of Survey Research at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on political communication, emphasizing online activity and political participation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1972) is Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication, and Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.