First, Craig Ferguson’s fantastic, non-partisan criticism-cum-call-to-arms about the American election. It’s another example of how late night comedy shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (and The Late Late Show, I guess) get it so right and the mainstream news media get it so wrong. [via Blog This]
Second, a new Ohio State University report concludes that those who rely on late night comedy for their news intake regarding the election are less informed about candidates and issues than network news-watchers:
Young Mie Kim, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State., said both news and entertainment promote some knowledge gain, “but people who are exposed to news gain more factual information and learn more about a wide range of important topics than those exposed to entertainment media.”
…
In a study of about 85 people, Kim and Vishak found that fake news show viewers:
- Retain more information about a political candidate’s personal life and less about their positions on political issues.
- Retain less information about political issues and processes compared to viewers of network news.
Mock news shows may not be the best way to learn about political candidates and issues because viewers watch the programs to be entertained, Kim said. So they may not be paying attention to all of the details.
Seems like a statement of the obvious to me, but there`s one consideration. To find Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert funny—and I mean seriously funny—means you`ve got to understand the inside jokes, the subtle information. And anyone who relies exclusively on late night comedy for information is kinda missing the point (both the intentions of the shows and the jokes the shows are making).
So, of course, there`s a counterpoint provided by Megan Boler at OISE:
Viewers of the shows are already informed before they tune in, Boler said.
“The Daily Show is not watched to the exclusion of other sources,” Boler said in an interview with CTV.ca. “In order to appreciate satire you have to have background knowledge. You’re not going to have pleasure watching The Daily Show if you haven’t been talking to your friends about what’s going on, following other kinds of news sources.”
Boler argues that Kim’s study, which showed viewers 20-minute video segments from either NBC and CNN or The Daily Show about a Supreme Court nominee, fails to take into account how viewers gather news.
More people are getting their news from a variety of sources, including blogs and Internet media outlets, in an attempt to be more politically engaged, she said.
Therefore, reaction to a single news clip cannot accurately evaluate a subjects’ political knowledge because it does not reflect the fact that people rarely gain that knowledge from a single source.
And the study ignores the fact that many viewers watch the programs online, which has spurred a whole online, user-generated media industry.
“Through that online watching there’s a level of citizenship engagement where people can comment on it, they can link to it on their blogs, they can talk to their friends about it online, so there’s an intense kind of community building,” Boler said.
At the end of the day, the role of satirical news shows isn’t to be a single source of information for viewers.
“Most people are aware that part of the pleasure of watching the Daily Show or Colbert is that it’s making fun of news formats. It’s doing that both in content and form,” Boler said.
“It’s doing that by pretending to be news and it’s doing it by using clips from actual news and then making a joke about how straight news is doing its job. And it’s urging you to ask questions about the role of media in a democracy.”
Of course, Boler definitely comes off looking like a fan of late night comedy rather than a completely independent observer. But she does tap into what are really the more interesting questions:
- How do regular viewers of network news compare to late night comedy viewers when it comes to news-gathering habits?
- How many different types of medium and different sources does each consult?
- How does the evidence from those two questions mesh with age and education demographics and what-not?
More importantly, no one answers whether the Ohio State study includes highly-partisan cable channels like MSNBC and Fox News or whether “network news” is limited purely to broadcast television. [via Neatorama]
3 years ago