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Real Fake News: the Colbert Report and Affective Polarization

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Real Fake News: the Colbert Report and Affective Polarization The College of Wooster Libraries Open Works Senior Independent Study Theses 2018 Real Fake News: The olC bert Report and Affective Polarization Jeffrey J. Skoroda The College of Wooster, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy Part of the American Politics Commons, and the Social Influence and Political Communication Commons Recommended Citation Skoroda, Jeffrey J., "Real Fake News: The oC lbert Report and Affective Polarization" (2018). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 8283. https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/8283 This Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar is brought to you by Open Works, a service of The oC llege of Wooster Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Independent Study Theses by an authorized administrator of Open Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Copyright 2018 Jeffrey J. Skoroda Skoroda Page 1 Real Fake News: The Colbert Report and Affective Polarization By: Jeffrey Skoroda An Independent Study Thesis Submitted to the Department of Political Science At the College of Wooster March 2018 In partial fulfillment of I.S. Thesis Advisor: Bas van Doorn Second Reader: Heather Ondercin Skoroda Page 2 Acknowledgements To my Friends, old and new: Thank you all for being a constant network of support, smiles, and laughter throughout this process. Be it practicing on the quad or being way too loud in the Library, you’ve made my Wooster experience an extremely memorable one that I can always look back upon positively. May the past four years be only a starting point for our friendships. To the faculty of Wooster: Thank you for providing me with new ways to look at the world and for teaching me how to be a more curious, organized and passionate student. I would not be here right now if it weren’t for your excellent mentoring, advising and teaching. To my Family: Its difficult to put into a short blurb how much your love and support means to me. You’ve opened up countless opportunities for me to become the best person I can, and I don’t think there’s any way I can properly repay you. Thank you for dealing with me for the past 21 years, I hope the future holds just as many happy memories that I can always be thankful for. Skoroda Page 3 Abstract This Independent Study examines the relationship between political satire and affective polarization. Affective polarization is a newly growing form of political polarization wherein partisans are polarized based on mutual dislike for opposing partisans rather than ideological disagreements. Political news has been linked to this recent trend in polarization. Over the past two decades, political scientists have taken an interest in investigating the impact of political satire programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report through the same lens as traditional political news. These satirical news programs implement satire, a more complex form of comedy that can require more cognitive processing and can produce a variety of viewing effects. This projects looks into how orientation of The Colbert Report and partisanship influences one’s affective response to viewing a clip from The Colbert Report. Drawing from past research, I establish a dual moderating hypothesis which predicted that conservatives under the entertainment orientation and liberals under the information orientation would experience higher affective polarization. I utilize an experimental research design to test my hypotheses. Results showed that liberals did not experience different levels of affective polarization under different orientations, and that conservatives experienced a stronger affective response under the entertainment orientation. Skoroda Page 4 Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 8 Affective Polarization and Media .................................................................................................... 10 Political Satire ................................................................................................................................ 13 News or Entertainment? ................................................................................................................ 17 Satirical News Audiences ................................................................................................................ 21 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 25 Chapter 3: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 29 Experimental Design ...................................................................................................................... 30 Independent Variable ..................................................................................................................... 31 Moderating Variables ..................................................................................................................... 32 Dependent Variable ....................................................................................................................... 34 Controls ......................................................................................................................................... 35 Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 5: Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 45 Discussion of Results ...................................................................................................................... 45 Considerations ............................................................................................................................... 47 Implications ................................................................................................................................... 48 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................... 49 Appendix A: Survey ............................................................................................................... 53 Skoroda Page 5 List of Tables and Figures Table 3.1- Variable H2/H3..............................................................................................................29 Table 3.2- Hypotheses H2/H3........................................................................................................30 Table 3.3- Pre-Exposure Directives..............................................................................................33 Table 3.4- Knowledge Test..............................................................................................................33 Table 3.5- Entertainment Evaluation...........................................................................................33 Table 3.6- Social Distance................................................................................................................34 Table 3.7- Controls.............................................................................................................................35 Table 4.1- Liberal Orientation/Exposure...................................................................................41 Table 4.2- Young-Liberal Orientation/Exposure.....................................................................42 Table 4.3- Conservative Across Conditions...............................................................................42 Table 4.4- Conservative: Control-Entertainment....................................................................43 Table 4.5- Liberals Across Conditions.........................................................................................43 Skoroda Page 6 Introduction On December 18th, 2014 Stephen Colbert concluded the final episode of The Colbert Report and thus ended one of the most influential eras of political satire in United States history. Between both Colbert and fellow late night Comedy Central host Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, political satire was revitalized and gained a massive following amongst American citizens. While many popular successors have followed in the footsteps of Colbert and Stewart, the duo have remained the most influential mixers of comedy and politics in the 21st century. Colbert and Stewart format their respective programs in a similar style to TV news programs; with both featuring the discussion of significant and newsworthy topics, but presented in a satirical way. This satirical approach to the discussion of politics has existed in the American media for decades, but never to the success of Colbert and Stewart. The popularity and influence of The Colbert Report and Daily Show have called into question the legitimacy of these programs as actual sources of news and not just entertainment programs. The success of Colbert and Stewart has led to a surge in political satire programs, like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and the new iteration of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which have all achieved great popularity. Political satire has become
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