Satire on the Front Page: What Happens When Traditional News Organizations Get Funny About Election Coverage

• In Event: Emotion in Political Communication

Abstract

As political satire enjoys popularity in the current media environment, different outlets are toying
with it, including traditionally objective sources of hard news. An experiment (N = 370) was
designed to test the potential of message sources of text-based political satire to influence humor
and other discrete emotional responses to this type of political communication. An affective
mediation model was proposed whereby message source and audience political party
identification shape humor, anger, fear, and hope responses to the message, which in turn shape
intentions to work for and to work against the candidate at the heart of the satirical message. The
results suggest both message and audience factors influence different emotional responses to
political satire, and that motivation to work for versus working against a satirized candidate
depend on different patterns of humor and emotional responses.

Authors

• Jessica Gall Myrick, Pennsylvania State U

• Jason T. Peifer, Indiana U