Do People Actually Learn from Colbert and Stewart?

We've had some time now to review an emerging body of work that asks whether people learn from such faux news programs as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.  While I'm not going to bore you with a formal lit review, I will try to summarize what we know so far about the effects of such "soft news" programs.

• People view such programs differently than traditional news.  Call this the couch potato hypothesis.  With less mental effort you get less learning.  After all, most people sit down in front of the TV to be entertained and even when they do try to be informed by such content, the brain is wired differently. 

• Similar to above is the empty-calorie hypothesis, that idea that people will rely on humorous forms of news and feel filled up, like sucking on a Coke, and won't consume their vegetables (real news).  The result?  Less knowledge.

• What you know matters.  Well-informed folks glean more from an information source than less-informed.  That said, TV best serves those who know least, especially TV news, because of the way TV tells a story versus the traditional inverted pyramid of print news, which with its emphasis on the latest information first assumes prior knowledge.

• Humor is thought to get in the way of learning, but to help in persuasion.  The theory is straightforward -- humor lowers our defenses, reduces counter-arguing, and is therefore more likely to persuade.  But humor interferes with actual learning.

• The content of these faux news programs resembles in some ways the TV newscasts.  Content analyses find many similarities, though these also find dramatic differences.  It's hard to make tragedy funny, and often Colbert and Stewart take the easy way out, the easy laugh, because it can backfire if you try to make a tragedy into something it's not.  Quite simply, unless you're consuming traditional news, there are huge holes in your information, gaps found in news quizzes or measures of political knowledge.

• But ... the people who watch these programs tend to be news junkies anyway, well-educated and young, people who "get" the jokes because they're at least moderately informed.

• Finally, it's that "moderate" thing that matters.  It's the folks who attend to no news but watch these programs who come out losers, at least as measured by tests of political knowledge.

• Beware the methodological mess-up.  Sometimes scholars will combine these two shows with the late-night talk shows (i.e., Jay Leno).  They are not the same.  Different content, different audiences, different results.  I'm in the middle of a study that finds, today, you really have to ask about exposure to specific networks (Fox News, etc.) and even specific programs (The O'Reilly Factor) to get at the kinds of effects that matter in political communication.

It Depends ...

For decades we've wrestled with explaining why some people seem to learn from TV news and some don't.  A subset of that work is trying to understand who learns from faux news programs like The Daily Show, an area of my own research.  There's a new paper out that goes a long way, I think, in explaining why some people learn from late-night comedies and some do not.  You know it's good.  It cites me.  Twice.

Anyway, the basic finding is summed up nicely in the study text:

The results suggest that viewers who orient to The Daily Show as news, or as a mix of news and entertainment, activate greater mental resources than those who orient to The Daily Show as purely entertainment.

So, to put it another way, it depends on how you approach the program.  This is not unlike a small body of work I've cited myself that argues one reason many people don't learn all that much from TV news is that they approach the medium as "easy" and relaxing, while they approach print as "hard" and requiring more mental effort.  The result is obvious.  Greater mental effort, greater learning.  As an aside, the less educated or interested do tend to learn something from TV news, in part because of the way stories there are structured as opposed to traditional print articles.

Here, this study published in Mass Communication & Society suggests much the same effect for late-night comedies.  It all depends on why you watch.

Learning from Faux News

How people learn from comedy or faux news programs has been a research topic of mine for quite some time, a rich vein now being mined by a whole new group of people smarter and faster than I am.  It's also an area that draws interesting comment, such as this piece out of New Zealand.  A lot of this, while fascinating, is not on point to my discussion here, so let me help you find the pertinent section by repeating some of it:

Audience effects: While there is some quantitative evidence that the politically uninterested can indeed obtain useful political knowledge as a by-product of watching infotainment shows, the measures of political learning used (for example, self-reported learning, name recognition rather than recall, and issue attention) are weak indicators of political knowledge, and any modest gains tend to be offset by countervailing negatives (Baum 2007; Baumgartner and Morris 2006; Cooper and Bailey 2008). 

Other than failing to cite the work of Hollander (yes, a significant flaw), this makes the traditional point that recall and attention are often lousy measures of what people know.  I won't repeat my many postings on the topic.  But this is the best measure we tend to have, the most workable surrogate, of something as complex as political knowledge.

Just after this:

Even optimists concede that the quality and diversity of information filtered through 'the relatively narrow lens of the entertainment-oriented soft news media' might not lead to better citizens, or better policies (Baum 2002, p. 106; 2007, p. 115). 

Obviously this goes beyond mere knowledge to the consequences of that knowledge, and it has that softening "might not" that is integral not only to academicspeak, but is also accurate.

Then he quickly shifts to the persuasive power, or lack thereof, of these programs.  All good points.  It's an interesting piece, certainly worth a read if you're interested in how comedy shows and The Daily Show in particular, may influence an audience.

Jon Stewart and Diminishing Returns

Watching Jon Stewart has diminishing returns.  Yeah, you can insert a joke here if you like.  Seems too easy, so I'm gonna move on.

There's a new study out, though, that finds watching Jon Stewart's The Daily Show leads to greater attentiveness to the news, but the more you watch, the less of an effect it has.  The International Journal of Public Opinion Research article also notes that one-out-of-five viewers have little interest in politics -- fascinating given the content of the program.

A major point gets to the crux of the argument between those who believe enertainment news programs either fail to inform, or actually do inform, some people.  This article falls on the "inform" side, suggesting that many with no interest are exposed to some news and information, thus leading to greater attentiveness and, I suppose by default, greater knowledge.

Stewart vs. Colbert

There is an emerging bit of scholarly work that suggests those two popular comedy faux news programs -- Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report -- have very different effects on their audiences.

Stewart's show is more straightforward.  He slams Republicans, occasionally Democrats, but basically you know where's coming from. Colbert is more sneaky.  He plays a Republican blowhard to make fun of Republicans and blowhards.  But his approach confuses some.  In other words, he nudges people to like Republicans and those he satirizes, according to one study.

Why mention this?  In part the issue is methodological.  You wouldn't want to measure exposure to the two programs and then collapse this into a single index called Exposure to Late Night Comedy.  There are enough differences, at least suggested in some published studies or a few under consideration at journals, that combining the two might, if not cancel one another out, create measurement error issues.  And I think I broke a personal record for the number of commas in a single sentence.  Apologies.

Lots of people mention such programs as a source of their news and information, as places that influence what people know.  If true, we must be careful in how we take these questions and combine them into a single variable.  In fact, best I can tell from some early data, this would be a mistake.

What dependent variables would this most likely influence?  Probably not knowledge so much as attitudinal items, such as like/dislike of candidates or even attitudes about major institutions such as Congress or the Press.  I don't see it influencing trust in government but it might influence internal or external efficacy.  In general, we need to carefully examine differences between these two programs on key criterion variables before simply combining them in a single index.

SLOPpy Polls

A SLOP is a "self-selected opinion poll," most often seen on TV where some talkinghead host asks you to vote via phone or online on some issue. As AAPOR points out, "there is no control over respondent selection because anyone can call in an opinion." So don't be surprised when watchers of Lou Dobbs, for example, all call in and skew the program's "poll" results to favor -- surprisingly -- what Dobbs "thinks."

So as a measure of what people think, it's a load of complete crap.

And that brings us to this bit seen below by funnyman Jon Stewart. Thanks to Nick Browning for pointing this one out to me. As often is the case, Stewart sums it all up and makes it funny to boot.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Poll Bearers
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Do People Learn from Faux News?

It's been a question raised by scholars and by those somewhat, um, less scholarly -- do people learn from entertainment faux news programs such as the funny stuff by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? The answer so far has been mixed. Programs increase feelings of efficacy but decrease trust, seem to aid learning or perhaps not. They influence how people process the news, what factors they consider, or sometimes not.

So I'm re-reading a study in Journal of Communication by Kim and Vishak (story about it here). I blogged about it earlier, but I wanted to re-read the thing and see if any fresh ideas emerge other than what I blogged on earlier. The basics remain the same: mainstream news media exposure led to greater and more accurate knowledge in a controlled experiment than did The Daily Show.

What seems to explain the difference is the goal of the user. This gets a bit into uses and gratifications research. If my goal in watching Stewart is to be entertained, my brain engages with the program in a very different way than it does with CNN or reading news online. Let's face it, watching CNN is a lot of things, but entertaining ain't one of 'em. If my goal is to laugh at current events and politicians, then the brain is not in "learning" mode, thus actual learning decreases and the accuracy of what I remember suffers as well.

So it's in part what we bring to the TV. Yes, TV news suffers from delusions of adequacy, but when we catch up with the news we're in a different frame of mind, one willing to absorb and retain information -- if only a little since it's merely TV after all. When we sit to watch Colbert or Stewart be funny, it's a completely different take, even if people do say in surveys they watch such programs to keep up with the news.

The Daily Show and The New York Times

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Very funny segment by The Daily Show and its visit to The New York Times, and now a long of discussion of whether it was (1) a good idea, or (2) a great idea, or (3) the worst idea ever, to let the show into the hallowed building.

Obviously, good idea. And I side with those who argue that the big with Jason Jones picking up a landline phone -- "I'm a reporter from the '80s, makin' sure everything's factual; oh, you guys are like a walking Colonial Williamsburg" -- says something positive about journalists who actually check stuff before they go with it, who try to get (borrowed phrase) the "best obtainable version of the truth."

Anyway, it's a funny episode. Watch, and enjoy. And then go read the Times.

Summing Up II

Yesterday I started to sum up what we know about media and political knowledge. An exercise in futility? Maybe. But it's spring break and if I'm not doing this I'll be outside painting the house. Lemme have my futility instead.

My earlier post focused on TV news. Now let's turn to another form of TV, that lovable hybrid called entertainment-faux-fake-news.

In other words, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But also, if you stretch the definition, those late-night talk shows and even daytime programs.

So, what do we know?

Not a hell of a lot. I've read a lot of research about the two big programs. Done some myself. There is some suggestion that the folks who watch these two shows are already pretty high in political knowledge and kinda young too, an interesting combo. Mostly younger people do poorly on tests of political knowledge. My own work suggests that, for the least knowledgeable, these programs don't help a lot. Other work suggests they do.

And then there's the recent fun piece about Colbert's program nudging people to the political right.

In general two arguments emerge: these programs are the best things to happen to democracy, or these programs are the worst things to happen to democracy. Is satire and parody a good thing? Haven't we always had satire and parody? Is getting at the truth more important than following what to the public seems like obscure, silly, journalistic routines that balance a story to the point of giving even lying idiots a say?

Back to what we know. The audience is knowledgeable, some learning takes place, and these programs do feed how people interpret politicians and public figures. Ridicule is a powerful weapon, one Saturday Night Live did quite well in the 1970s with President Gerald Ford. But too much, some research suggests, might tip us over to even less trust in government. Yeah, trust is hardly a sexy thing to promote, but a democracy rests on a stable reservoir of trust existing out there, something drawn on when times get tough -- oh, like now.

Summing up my summing up -- we don't know a lot about the effects of these programs. Parody and satire and faux news seems to inform a few, entertain a lot, but there are suggestions that the laughter gets in the way of real learning. The most powerful effect may be a negative attitude toward the public figures ridiculed by these guys. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen.

Faux News beats No News,but not Real News

People do not learn as much from fake news programs such as The Daily Show as they do from real news, according to an account of a new study.

According to the release:

People watching television news learned more about a candidate’s position on issues and about political procedures compared to those watching the fake news shows, while fake news shows primarily taught viewers about a candidate’s personal background.

I've not read this issue of Journal of Communication yet, so I'm basing my comments on the news report. When I see the actual research I'll post again.

The authors conducted an experiment with 85 real people (as opposed to college students). Some watched NBC or CNN, some watched The Daily Show, and some watched a control group science documentary. Then subjects wrote what they remembered, ranked them as positive or negative toward a person or group mentioned, and then took a 29-question knowledge test.

The results showed that people who watched the NBC and CNN news segment were able to recall more details about all topics than those who watched The Daily Show clip. They also averaged two more questions correct in the test. The real news clip led viewers to learn about who the nominee was and where he stood on important issues, while also increasing their understanding of political policies and issues.

In contrast, people watching The Daily Show remembered details about the nominee’s college choice and family members, but were less informed on important political issues and the nominee’s stance on those issues.

As a controlled experiment, this tells us a lot that survey-based research cannot easily tease out, in part because of the interest and education differences between those who watch faux news and those who watch mainstream, traditional news. What I can't tell from the press release are the differences between the entertainment-based segment and the news segment and whether the facts were more or less identical and a host of other methodological problems that can crop up in studies like this. JoC is a helluva journal, so I'm assuming all is kosher on the methodology front, but I'll report back when I can look at the study.

The abstract, all that's available online, suggests this is a much deeper piece of research than reported in the press release. That's not unusual since a news release goes for the "news" angle, not the theory.

But I can't say I'm terribly surprised that you'd learn more from being forced to watch a real news program than you'd learn from watching a funny, entertainment-based, fake news program. But in mass comm we sometimes dare to research the obvious, in part because someone has to test the obvious before we move on to other possible effects. In that, this study appears to provide support for what we'd expect to find.

This has little to do with motivation, though. People seek out such faux programs because they're either tuned out from news or because they find the approach of journalists to be, ahem, dreary. That's more real world in its significance, both for journalism and the fate of democracy.