Political Satire’s News Function in the Aftermath of Trump’s Election:
A Content Analysis of American News Programmes and Political Satire ShowsMargien Timmer 12334286 Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
Supervisor: Dr. M. Boukes June 28th, 2019
2
Abstract
The unexpected victory of Donald Trump as 45th President of the United States and the unprecedented events that followed his election provided a constant stream of content for political satirists. These satirists see themselves as entertainers, but the public may perceive their content as a source of news. While television news programmes and their objectivity as well as their interpretive role suffer under the tense commercial market, the question is how satire may fill this gap. This study evaluated how these two television genres differed or overlapped in their coverage of President Trump after the 2016 US presidential election. The results showed that while political satire was far more negative and emotional in their coverage than news programmes, there are also other major differences between those news programmes. News programmes covered mainly policy issues, while political satire focused more on personal issues. Although speculated about in the literature, this study found political satire to be unsuited to serve an interpretative news role in the evaluated time period, as their items were shorter than that of news programmes. Lastly, political satire uses a lot of escapist jokes, especially after the inauguration. The difference between the time period after the election and after the inauguration was expected to have a moderating function on the differences between the two genres, but this was not the case. Political satire continues to be mainly a source of entertainment and escapism, while news programmes provide considerably more objective and substantive coverage.
3
Introduction
“For eight years a lot of people wouldn’t accept that Barack Obama was President of the United States, for instance Donald Trump. But, like it or not, for the record… not. We have to
accept that Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States (booing).” Stephen
Colbert made his discontent of the election outcome clear on his late night show the day after the presidential election in 2016. Similar tones of disbelief could be found on the covers of national and international newspapers (Nichols, 2016; Victor, 2016; Witte & Denver, 2016); the whole world was surprised that this businessman and television personality could win the US Presidency over a veteran politician and former first lady. Yet, Colbert’s comment also established that the election was final and people had to accept the outcome.
The day before the election Hillary Clinton was given an eighty-five percent chance to win (Katz, 2016).According to Michael Wolff’s bestseller book Fire and Fury, even the now-President himself nor anyone in his team believed he could or would win. The election outcome and the series of unprecedented events that followed were golden material for political satirists and comedians, even though the events themselves were almost satire-like (Gleiberman, 2016). Late night talk show hosts had daily content for their monologues and critiquing Trump turned out to be a successful endeavour to attract audiences. Especially the ratings of the outspoken The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (LSSC) grew consistently as compared to the more neutral
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Morgan, 2017).
Although the main goal of political satire is to entertain, more and more people have turned to it as a source of news (Young & Tissinger, 2006, p. 128). As early as the 2000s, concern grew over the role of late night talk show hosts as political commentators, especially as they were increasingly seen as actual political commentators by their audience rather than just comedians (Jones, 2005, p. 92). Because satirists do not claim to be journalists, political satirists can be bolder in their opinions and expressions (Abel & Barthel, 2013). This
4
accumulated to such a point that traditional news broadcasters expressed their wish to act as freely and opinionated as former The Daily Show-host Jon Stewart (Abel & Barthel, 2013).
With this increasing importance of political satire as a news provider, the question remains to what extent the combination of comedy and information follows traditional conceptions of news production. Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show (TDS) until 2015, spoke about the role satirists should play during difficult political situations: “there are times when it’s not about making a joke, it’s about having to acknowledge what is going on, so you can feel like you’re still in the same world as everyone else (Jones, 2005, p. 116).” There were more jokes than substantive content in the TDS political coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign (Fox, Koloen & Sahin, 2007). In an even more complex political situation in the US in the aftermath of the 2016 election, did political satire turn into a more serious news source or was it all comedy? And is there a difference between the period after the election when people were still surprised of the outcome and the period after the inauguration when the result had settled in?
It is believed that a functioning democracy requires its people to have a certain level of political knowledge (Sotirovic & McLeod, 2004). Such knowledge is often derived from television news (Pew Research Centre, 2017). While traditional news media like to see themselves as objective and rational, political satire looks partisan and emotional. Most journalists identify themselves as interpreters and analysers of the news, but is it not political satire that actually spends more time analysing the news? Satire deconstructs both the message and the messenger (Alonso, 2018), without the time pressure or “breaking news” sensationalism that traditional news encounter (Cushion, Rodger & Lewis, 2014). This leads to the following research question: How did American political satire differ from and overlap with traditional news programmes in their coverage of President Trump after the 2016 US presidential election?
5
Theoretical Framework: The Rise of Political Satire
“Political news is shaped by the extent to which news media meet the societal expectations towards them (Scherr, Bachl & DeVreese, 2018, p. 2).” What society expects of the news depends on the political and economic situations (Scherr et al., 2018, p. 2), but also on peoples direct needs or desires (Hanson & Haridakis, 2008). The uses and gratification theory assumes that an audience is actively selecting media that serve their individual and societal needs (McQuail, 2012, p. 423-5).
With a decrease in news consumption from traditional media, more Americans consume their news across different platforms (Gilde Zuñiga & Hinsley, 2013, p. 928). Television remains the main source of news for most Americans, but the percentage of Americans who frequently watch television news has dropped from 57% in 2016 to 50% a year later. This was only 7% higher than those who often consumed online news in 2016 (Pew Research Centre, 2017).
A television genre that has undeniably captured the interest of the American youth is political satire (Meddaugh, 2010). The long-running shows Saturday Night Live and TDS now have competitors on most channels with more than ten political satire talk shows having aired during the election of 2016 (Martin, 2016).By combining humour and information these shows make the news interesting for a group that does not naturally consume a lot of news (Meddaugh, 2010; Rottinghaus, Bird, Ridout & Self, 2008). Even though humorous news content is perceived as less serious, credible and informing than those messages without a comedic tone, humorous messages do absorb people deeper in the content (Nabi, Moyer-Gusé & Byrne, 2007; Boukes, Boomgaarden, Moorman & De Vreese, 2015). When people see that they can get a reward in the form of a laugh, they concentrate better on the message.
While in Holbert’s 2005 typology of political entertainment programmes political satire was still an “underdeveloped line of research” (p. 441), nowadays much more is known about
6
mostly the effects political satire may have. Political satire has the capacity to set both the short-term public and the long-short-term political agenda (Boukes, 2018). Especially when there is a longer focus on one subject, which was not often the case in political satire of the early 2000s. Yet, current late night talk shows like Late Night with Seth Meyers (LNSM) or Last Week Tonight also have longer segments that focus on one subject.
While political satirists still consider themselves as entertainers, the public sees it differently. The term the ‘Fifth Estate’ has even come up to describe late night comedy (Meddaugh, 2010, p. 377). TDS was already nominated for an award for best newscast and Jon Stewart was named as most important newscaster in the US (Baym, 2005). Political satire content is also not just entertainment. A content analysis of twelve years of political satire interviews showed that most interviewed guests were people with an intellectual occupation, like politicians, academics or journalists (Becker & Goldberg, 2017, p. 135). The power of political satire is undeniable and with this comes a responsibility. The next section will look at the role of traditional media in a democracy and to what extent political satire can provide a similar role.
Media and Democracy
A working democracy requires citizens to make informed decisions. Following Althaus (2011), this statement needs a normative assessment. Strömbäck (2005) discusses theories about the role of citizens and media in a democracy. For this study, a deliberative democracy is considered the normative goal a society should aim for in which the media can help open a conversation between parties in a time where this seems unlikely (Klar, Krupnikov & Ryan, 2019). American news programmes are already rather deliberative (Wessler & Rinke, 2014). Deliberative media should showcase popular inclusion, provide a deliberative conversation and avoid premature closure of a subject (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards & Rucht, 2002).
7
In the traditional prototypical political interview, there is hardly room for deliberation. The interviewer asks a question and the interviewee answers, with the presenter as the guardian of democracy and the interviewee as a potential danger to democracy (Baym, 2013, p. 6). On the other side, Baym (2005, p. 273) argues that in TDS the interviews are done in an argumentative, but civil way, with “the goal of mutual understanding”.
Baym (2013) also found this civility in his comparison between four different interviews with the same political candidate on different outlets. While the traditional interview is aggressive and “disallowing consideration of political foundations”, late night talk show interviews are civil and cooperative, while discussing most of the same subjects as traditional news interviews (Baym, 2013, p. 16). Not all traditional news interviews are as aggressive as in the study of Baym (2013), but it seems that talk show interviews may align more closely with the ideals of media in a deliberative democracy. The next section will further theorize the expected similarities and differences between news media content and political satire content and the roles both perform in a deliberative democracy.
Journalistic Roles: Neutral and Objective?
Journalistic role conceptions are the way journalists think about their function in society, the standards they should work by and what kind of news they provide (Van Der Wurff & Schoenbach, 2014, p. 434). Most journalists follow journalistic principles described in books like The Elements of Journalism (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2014), which talks about the seeking of truth, independence and accountability.
One of the ways to achieve this truth and independence is through journalists “rituals of objectivity” (Tuchman, 1972). This is “a key set of professional practices” to protect journalists from the risks of their trade (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013, p. 129), like deadlines and legal liabilities. If journalists report in a detached, neutral and impersonal way, these risks can be avoided. This
8
would also lead to the use of independent experts as a way of reporting two sides of the story, while staying an objective journalist.
The American media system makes complete independence impossible, as there are only a few big players (McChesney, 1999). Fox News is outspokenly right-wing conservative, while MSNBC tried to move away from accusations of political bias (Stelter, 2008), before putting liberal commentator Rachel Maddow in the top spot (Darr & Dunaway, 2017). However, generally mainstream news media tend to remove partisan messaging and branding in their news coverage (Darr & Dunaway, 2017).
While Jon Stewart saw himself as “the distracted centre”, without a specific party affiliation, his humour was more popular among liberals than conservatives (Bennett, 2007, p. 282). Due to their satirical nature, late night comedy mostly has a negative tone in their content (Haigh & Heresco, 2010), especially when talking about political figures (Niven et al., 2003) and studies found that most late night jokes are not about an issue, but about a person (Niven, Lichter & Amundson, 2003, p. 130).
The President himself even spoke out in a Time Magazine interview about how Stephen Colbert’s views rose up since Colbert included daily criticism of Trump in his monologues: “The guy was dying. By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying” (Miller & Scherer, 2017). The ascend of Colbert reveals that it is this critical tone towards current politics that many people sought after the election. American political satire can be this critical due to their partiality, which counteracts softness due to neutral balancing (Bailey, 2018, p. 206).
Objectivity also shows in emotional neutrality. Wahl-Jorgensen (2013, p. 130) extended the “ritual of objectivity” to the “ritual of emotionality”, which says that while following the ideal of objectivity, journalists use emotions strategically in reports to create a narrative. However, it is not the journalists own emotions, but that of non-journalists like the public. While
9
there is knowledge on the emotional effect of political satire (Lee & Kwak, 2014; Lee & Jang, 2017), there is a gap in research on the actual usage of emotions in political satire. However, the following is hypothesized:
H1. Political satire is less objective towards Donald Trump than traditional news media: a. Political satire is more negative towards Trump than traditional news media b. Political satire is more emotional in their content than traditional news media c. Political satire uses less independent experts than traditional news media
Political Satire as Interpreter
One of the more popular typologies of journalistic role performances, was that of Weaver and Wilhoit (see Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018), who followed the work of Johnstone, Slawski and Bowman (see Van Der Wurff & Schoenbach, 2014, p. 435). Looking at this typology, 60 percent of American journalists saw themselves as news interpreters in the early 2000s. They claim to not only report the news factually, but also analyse and discuss planned policies and check government claims.
However, growing commercial motivations seem to have endangered the quality of news journalism (Costera Meijer, 2003). Instead of interpreters, traditional news outlets act more like a burglar alarm who sensationalize stories and ring the “breaking news” alarm bell all the time (Bennett, 2007). Airtime is given to stories that make money (Bennett, 2003) with a “substantial emphasis on unsubstantial information” (Fox et al., 2007, p. 122). With a focus on the news-of-the-day and factual occurrences (Cushion et al., 2014), there is no time nor space to analyse, thus leaving less room to provide a deliberative debate.
Whereas the burglar alarm (Zaller, 2003) activates audiences by using loud alarming frenzies, satire attracts audiences with its humour, but has accountability and reason behind the laughter (Baym, 2005, p. 273). TDS has been considered an alternative form of journalism that
10
checks power, critiques traditional news and enables public discourse for a deliberative democracy (Baym, 2005, p. 261). Satire’s goal is not just showing a situation, but also seeking the morality behind what is happening (Baym, 2005, p. 267).
Different studies show that political entertainment is perceived as more in-depth by viewers (Rottinghaus et al., 2007, p. 290) and longer soundbites are used than in traditional media (Niven, Lichter & Amundson, 2003; Fox et al., 2007). It was also found that news stories about the 2004 presidential campaign were longer in TDS than in traditional news programmes and that TDS was just as substantive as broadcast news programmes (Fox et al., 2007). Looking at Swiss political satire, most of their jokes appeared substantive as well (Matthes & Rauchfleisch, 2013). These similarities in substantivity lead to an expected similarity in discussed subjects.
Soundbites are the uninterrupted parts of speech of political figures used in news programmes (Esser, 2008). Due to the commercial pressure on news programmes, soundbites have diminished from 42 seconds in 1968 to 8 seconds in 2004 (Esser, 2008, p. 401). The ideal soundbites of traditional news outlets are a good substantive quote, with some emotion or character, but within 8 to 12 seconds (Baym, 2005, p. 264). This means that mistakes, rambles and stumbles are often cut out of traditional news. Meanwhile, political satire like TDS uses a lot of raw footage of political figures in their commentary (Baym, 2005, p. 264); often to create a humoristic effect.
McKain wrote in 2005 (p. 418) that political satire does not have the autonomy to choose and analyse their own news, due to the risk of being irrelevant or wrong in their analysis as they do not have the resources that actual journalists have. However, during the 2016 election late night shows often aired straight after important events like conventions and debates, interpreting what they saw with no time for traditional news to come in between. One could argue that satire shows have grown more independent and now rely less on traditional sources
11
of news. Yet, it is expected that satire does reference more to other media as they still mostly rely on traditional news to provide soundbites and in-depth news stories. Looking at the described role traditional news media play and political satire are perceived to play, the following is hypothesized:
H2. While political satire and traditional news media discuss similar subjects, political satire uses more interpretive techniques:
a. Political satire and traditional news media discuss similar subjects b. Political satire references other media more than traditional news c. Political satire uses longer soundbites than traditional news media d. Political satire has longer items than traditional news media
Political Satire as Escapism
Looking at the uses and gratifications theory (McQuail, 2012, p. 423-5) there is a discrepancy between what the public wants to see and what role journalist perform. Citizens often prefer relaxation, escape, entertainment and companionship in the media they consume (Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018, p. 150). It is this escapism that political satire is expected to provide after the election of Trump, whereas this is not expected from traditional news.
The election of Trump not only surprised people, it also emotionally affected them. The election led to a worldwide Women’s March the day after the inauguration, countering the past comments and bragging of the new President about his (alleged harassing) behaviour with women (Brewer & Dundes, 2018, p. 49). A study also found that 80 percent of young American females were affected by the election, due to increasing uncertainty, fear and disappointment (Dejongckheere, Fisher & Chang, 2018).
It is in times of political confusion that political satire comes in as a way “to locate some sanity” in the political landscape (Jones, 2005, p. 94). The psychological relief theory describes
12
how “people experience humor and laugh because they sense stress has been reduced in a certain way (Meyer, 2000, p. 312)”. Humour relieves tension that a serious conversation about a serious topic has and makes for a new way to interpret issues (Jones, 2005, p. 94). Humour could also be used as a way “to invoke meaningful political change and contest unjust social and environmental policies” (Fluri, 2019, p, 123).
However, there is not just one type of joke. Williams et al. (2004) make a distinction between escapist, dramatic, informative and meaningful jokes. The first two are silly and performative, referring to a situation as a movie or acting silly as a coping mechanism. The last two either give information about a situation or provide a deeper meaningful interpretation. After the unexpected victory of Trump, satirists are expected to mostly use escapist and dramatic jokes to release tension, while also using informative and meaningful jokes to explain the situation.
Hanitzsch and Vos (2018, p. 159) talk about journalist’s role as a friend and connector for the audience. This could also be the case for political satire. About Jon Stewart: “It’s like you’re having a conversation with someone, unlike CNN where it feels like you’re being lectured to” (Rottinghaus et al., 2008, p. 288). The connector provides a sense of belonging and a shared consciousness as the host follows the mood of the audience. In times of non-partisan national tragedies like 9/11, hosts start joking less (Haigh & Heresco, 2010, p. 158). The positive jokes at the beginning of the Iraq war changed to more negative ones as the public opinion started to shift (Williams et al., 2004). The hosts provided both information as levity and escapist jokes (Williams et al., 2004, p. 137).
Even though political satire in itself might be more negative than traditional news media, the jokes could counteract this (Niven et al., 2003). Yet, the negative tone of traditional news could deepen the sorrow of citizens and make them disconnect from politics (Bennett, 2007, p. 280). While traditional news might inform people and lessen confusion about situations, they
13
will not be able to fully recreate the release that humour creates, as people also not expect it of them. This leads to the following hypothesis:
H3. In contrast to traditional news media, political satire provides escapism in their content: a. By focusing on a shared consciousness
b. By using mainly escapist and dramatic jokes
Satire in the Time of Disbelief
After the election shock and emotions run high in parts of both public life and the media, as Trump’s victory was so unexpected. It is expected that the disbelief will slowly dissipate after the formal inauguration. While uncertainty about the new President might still be there, Trump has officially become the 45th President from that moment on. This is also expected to reflect in the content of both traditional news media and political satire after the inauguration compared to after the election.
During the campaign, CNN was often the subject of Trump’s tweets and was branded “enemy of the people” (Ghasemi Tari & Zahra Emamzadeh, 2018). Even though they see themselves as an objective news source, a less objective response to the election outcome in the first few weeks after the election would not be surprising. However, Americans are very patriotic (McKenna, 2012) and have historically been proud of their Presidents (New York Times, 1991). This leads to traditional media respecting the President and expecting him to act presidential, while they expect of themselves to act like the democratic force they see themselves as.
For political satire, a change between the two periods is also expected. The shock and disbelief of the election outcome probably will have led to satire hosts being very emotional and outspoken, while trying to comprehend what has happened together with the public. Political satire will follow the public opinion of disbelief and go full in on their escapist role,
14
combining humour and information. After the inauguration the disbelief will have settled down, so there is less need for escapism and more need for interpretation of the events that take place. This leads to the last hypothesis: H4. The difference in time period between after the election and after the inauguration has a moderating effect on the differences/similarities between political satire and news media and their objectivity, interpreter role and escapism.
Methodology
To investigate the hypotheses, a content analysis was conducted, comparing political satire and traditional news programmes over two time periods (i.e. directly after the election versus after the moment of Trump’s inauguration). The population consisted of four political satire shows and three news programmes. Due to the differences between the setup of political satire and traditional news programmes, individual items in the programmes that talked about Donald Trump were the unit of analysis (N = 655). A new item is identified by clear visual or audio markings or a complete change of subject.
To provide a more generalizable account of the differences between satire and news programmes, multiple programmes are selected rather than just one of each. For the four late night comedy talk shows, CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (44 items after the election vs. 47 items after the inauguration), NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers (35 vs. 46), Comedy Centrals The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (31 vs. 38) and TBS’ Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (20 vs. 17) were chosen. The first was chosen as it became the most popular late night show during the Trump presidency and is very political oriented (Canfield, 2017). The latter is also the case for LNSM (Itzkoff, 2017) and TDS is one of the longer running programmes. Full Frontal is also heavily political motivated, is the newest late night show, set up differently from the others and voiced by a woman, which makes it an interesting show to analyse.
15
For the news programmes, the following three shows were selected: CBS’ Evening News with Scott Pelley (51 items after the election vs. 63 items after the inauguration), CNN Tonight with Don Lemon (75 vs. 56) and MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (75 vs. 57). The first was chosen as it is on the same channel as LSSC. The second was chosen as it is one of the most popular CNN programmes and CNN was highly criticized by Trump in his campaign (Ghasemi Tari & Zahra Emamzadeh, 2018). The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) is one of the most popular news programmes on air during Trump’s presidency and just like Full Frontal hosted by a female journalist (i.e., reasons of comparability).
The periods that were analysed are November 9, 2016until January 19, 2017 (after election) and January 21, 2017 until March 31, 2017 (after inauguration); an equal number of weeks for both periods. Thanksgiving break (November 24 – 27) and Christmas break (December 23 – January 3) were excluded, as most shows had a break in this period. This Christmas break was mirrored for the period after the inauguration, meaning that March 1 until March 13 was excluded. Due to time limitations only the Mondays and Wednesdays were coded, as Full Frontal aired after the election on Mondays and after the inauguration on Wednesdays. The exact list of which programme aired when, can be found in Appendix 1.
All programmes except for Full Frontal were available on archive.org, a website that archives, among other things, television programmes. “CTRL+F Trump” was used to check the transcription if and when the programme mentioned Trump. Full Frontal has uploaded all their segments on their YouTube page. If it was not clear from the title or front photo whether the item talked about Trump, the item was watched. Items that were less than a minute long were not coded as this was often just one casual mention of Trump or a short joke, and were unlikely to contain any of the content features this study was interested in.
The main coding was conducted by one person, but to test for intercoder reliability 40 items were also coded by another individual with a background in Political Science before the
16
main coding started. To get these 40 items, all items of the programme per selected weekday were coded, looking at one programme per weekday starting from November 10th 2016 and January 23rd 2017; a complete list can be found in Appendix 1. This meant that programmes were also coded that were not on a Monday or Wednesday, as after this coding it became clear that coding all days would not be achievable for the time frame of this study.
Using both Krippendorff’s alpha and agreement percentages to check for reliability, the outcomes are presented in the footnotes in the next segment. When the Krippendorff’s alpha was not over .60, the codebook (Appendix 2) was made more specific. After that, another 15 items were coded by a third person, with no background in Communications or Political Science. The items were specifically selected on having many of the content features this study was interested in, so that reliability could be tested more thoroughly. The alpha’s can be found in the next segment, presented after the different variables.
Variables Measured
Three main concepts are measured in this study: objectivity, interpreter role and escapism. Objectivity of Hypothesis 1 was measured in three ways: negativity, emotionality and use of experts. Firstly, a three-point Likert scale was used to code how negative or positive the presenter was towards Trump. However, a positive normative stance was only coded once for both political satire and news, so in the analysis negativity towards Trump will be seen as a dichotomous variable (α = 1.001), as is whether hosts blamed Trump for something that had happened or will happen (α = 1.002). The two dichotomous variables emotion of presenter and emotion of first person to speak other than presenter are based on whether they appeared to be compassionate, enthusiastic, hopeful, angry, afraid, sad, surprised/in disbelief or not. If any of these emotions were shown looking at the overall item, they were coded as not emotionally
1 α = .79, 90% agreement during first reliability check 2 α = .71, 88% agreement during first reliability check
17
neutral. The first six emotions are based on the research by Lecheler, Bos and Vliegenthart (2015), surprised/in disbelief is added, as these were particularly expected to show up with presenters and guests. The Krippendorff’s alpha and agreement percentages of the different components of the two variables can be found in Table 1. Objectivity also was measured with the dichotomous variable use of experts (α = 1.003).
For the second hypothesis, the interpreter role is measured by assessing the length of the item in minutes (M = 5.02, SD = 3.33, α = 1.004), by the dichotomous variable reference to other
news media (α = 1.005) and whether the overall item is mainly about policy, campaign or
personal issues or a combination of the three, put together in the categorical variable content (α = .83, 93%6). The different subjects that made up which issue was the main one and the Krippendorff’s alpha and agreement percentage of all variables are presented in Table 2. The last component of the interpreter role of the media is the variable length of soundbite, which is
3 α = .90, 95% agreement during first reliability check 4 α = .99 during first reliability check
5 α = .90, 95% during first reliability check 6 α = .72, 78% during first reliability check
Table 1.
Krippendorff’s alpha and agreement percentage per emotion
Emotion Host First person in item to speak
α % α % Reliability check 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd 1st 2nd Neutral .85 .82 93 93 .76 .00 93 93 Angry .94 1.00 98 100 .71 .49 95 80 Sad - 1.00 100 100 .65 1.00 98 100 Happy 1.00 - 100 100 1.00 .76 100 93 Surprised/in disbelief .70 .87 88 93 .47 .49 95 87 Hopeful - - 100 100 .65 .63 98 93 Compassionate - 1.00 100 100 - .81 100 93 Afraid .00 .00 98 93 - - 100 100
18
the combined length of all soundbites in the item measured in seconds (M = 48.64, SD = 45.86, α = .977).
The third hypothesis regarding escapism consists of shared consciousness and whether escapist, informative, meaningful and/or dramatic jokes were used. These four variables were developed by Williams et al. (2004) for their research on late night jokes about the war in Iraq. The items are coded for being escapist (α = .77, 93%8), informative (α = 1.009) meaningful (α = .82, 93%10) and/or dramatic (α = 1.0011), a comprehensive explanation of the variables can
be found in the codebook in Appendix 2. Even though these four variables were mainly used to look at whether political satire focused mainly on their escapist role, it did also measure the occasional use of jokes by news programmes. The categorical variable shared consciousness is
7 During the first reliability check this variable only had an alpha of .20, as it was not clear for the second coder
what was meant by soundbite. After changing the codebook, the second reliability check lead to the current alpha.
8 α = 1.00, 100% agreement during first reliability check 9 α = .63, 85% agreement during first reliability check 10 α = .00, 98% agreement during first reliability check 11 α = .73, 88% agreement during first reliability check
Table 2.
Krippendorff’s alpha and agreement percentage per issue
α first check α second check Agreement % first check
Agreement % second check
Mainly policy .59 1.00 90 100
Cabinet issues .58 .77 83 93
Policy issues (wall etc.) .75 1.00 88 100
Mainly campaign .55 .86 95 93 Election outcome .68 1.00 85 100 Inauguration .88 1.00 98 100 Russia .45 1.00 90 100 Mainly personal .54 1.00 88 100 Family .77 1.00 95 100 Past life .79 1.00 98 100 Love/sexual life .00 1.00 98 100 Appearance .69 1.00 95 100 Age .00 - 98 100 Leisure time -.03 - 93 100
19
the sum of whether the host mentioned a community feeling and whether the host asked to come together as a nation, both had an alpha of 1.00.12
To answer the fourth hypothesis, the items were coded as being after the election or after the inauguration (α = 1.00) and the three hypotheses were looked at again, comparing time periods. The variable time period x genre was used as a moderator in a linear regression for dependant ratio variables (H2a, H2c, H2d, H3a) and in a logistic regression for dependant dummy variables (H1, H2b). Hypothesis 4 was confirmed when there was a significant interaction effect for the majority of variables per main Hypothesis (objectivity, interpreter role and escapism)
Results Objectivity
For Hypothesis 1a a significant moderate to strong association was found between political satire (N = 277) and news programmes (N = 376) and their negativity towards Donald Trump, using the Fishers exact test, because a 2x2 table was compared, (N = 653) Phi = .51, p < .001. News programmes were 18.4% negative in their items, which was 69.0% for political satire. Negativity also looked at whether political satire (N = 278) or news media (N = 377) blamed Trump for something that had happened or will happen and a weak association was found here, Fishers exact test (N = 655) Phi = .12, p = .002. Political satire hosts were more likely to blame Trump for something (28.4% of all items) than news hosts (18.0%). Political satire was more negative towards Trump and blamed him more, confirming Hypothesis 1a.
Results for Hypothesis 1b indicate a significant moderate association between political satire (N = 278) and news programmes (N = 377) and the hosts emotional neutrality, Fishers exact test (N = 655) Phi = .45, p < .001. News hosts were 54.9% neutral and satire hosts 11.5%. A significant moderate association between political satire (N = 75) and news programmes (N
20
= 287) was also found for the first person to speak other than the host, (N = 362) Phi = .40, p < .001. For news programmes this person was 56.8% neutral, whereas this was only 8.0% for political satire. Political satire hosts and their guests were significantly more emotional than their news counterparts, confirming Hypothesis 1b.
For hypothesis 1c a significant moderate association was found, Fishers exact test (N = 655) Phi = -.49, p < .001. News programmes (N = 377) used experts in 75% of their items, compared to 25% for political satire (N = 278), confirming Hypothesis 1c.
This study expected a moderating effect for the difference between the period after the election and the period after the inauguration. Using a logistic regression no significant interaction effect was found for time period x genre and the five variables that were used to measure objectivity, rejecting Hypothesis 4 for this case.
Interpreter role
For Hypothesis 2a a weak significant association was found, χ2 (3, N = 655) = 23.35, Phi = .19, p < .001. News programmes (N = 377) mostly talked about policy issues (44%), whereas the three issues were quite evenly distributed for political satire ((N = 278), between 24% and 30%). Hypothesis 2a is rejected as the two genres did not discuss similar subjects.
For Hypothesis 2b a weak to moderate association was found, Fishers exact test (N = 655) Phi = -.32, p < .001. Political satire (N = 278) referenced other media in 73.0% of the items, whereas this was only 40.3% for news programmes (N = 377). Hypothesis 2b can be confirmed as political satire does reference more other news media than news programmes.
An Independent T-test showed that political satire (N = 278, M = 58.03, SD = 45.67) use significantly longer total of soundbites in their items than news programmes (N = 377, M = 41.06, SD = 44.70), t (343.69) = -3.56, p < .000, 95% CI [-26.34, -7.60], meaning that Hypothesis 2c can be confirmed.
21
An Independent T-test was also conducted for the length of the item between news programmes (N = 377, M = 5.35, SD = 3,71) and political satire (N = 278, M = 4.57, SD = 2.67), t (652.53) = 3,14, p = .002, 95% CI [.29, 1.27]. Political satire had significantly shorter items about Trump than news programmes, rejecting Hypothesis 2d.
A linear or logistic regression was also conducted for these variables to see whether time period and the two genres had a significant interaction effect on interpreter role. Time
period x genre had a significant interaction effect on the referencing of other news media, χ2 (1,
N = 655) = 2.52, p = .008, 95% CI [1.28, 4.96]. This was due to an increase in referencing other
media by 12.9% for political satire, whereas there was a decrease in referencing by 6.4% for news programmes. No other variables had a significant difference when comparing the time periods, however an interesting result was that after the election only 16.9% of the political satire items talked about only policy issues and this increased to 40.5% after the inauguration. More differences can be found in Table 3. However, as time period only led to a significant interaction for referencing other media, Hypothesis 4 can still be rejected for interpreter role.
Escapism
For Hypothesis 3a no significant difference was found between political satire and news programmes, χ2 (2, N = 655) = 3,49, Phi = .07, p = .175, rejecting Hypothesis 3a. Shared
Table 3.
Content in percentage mentioned in items per type of show
Policy Campaign Personal Combination
After election News 40.3 26.9 22.4 10.4
Late night 16.9 36.9 23.8 22.3
After inauguration News 48.3 27.8 13.1 10.8
22
consciousness was only mentioned in seven news items, all after the election, and in eight political satire items, four after the election and four after the inauguration.
Confirming Hypothesis 3b, escapist and dramatic jokes were the most used jokes by political satirists, as seen in Figure 1. Compared to news programmes, political satire often used a combination of jokes, whereas if news programmes joked, it was often just an informative, meaningful or dramatic joke.
Figure 1. Type of joke per type of programme
Comparing the time periods, a linear regression found no significant interaction effect for time period x genre for shared consciousness. Results for the different jokes showed that news programmes made more single informative jokes than political satire after the
inauguration (42.1% compared to 2.9%). While political satire made even more escapist and dramatic jokes after the inauguration (57%) compared to before (47.1%). So even though
23
Hypothesis 4 can be rejected for this case for shared consciousness, there are clear differences for the different jokes between the two time periods.
Programme differences
Looking at the specific news programmes, The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) stood out. Whereas Evening News and CNN Tonight had a neutrality of respectively 98.2% and 90.0% towards Trump, this was only 59.1% for TRMS. TRMS also blamed Trump in 34.8% of the items, where this was 2.6% for Evening News and 14.5% for CNN Tonight. While Evening News and CNN Tonight used experts in 91.2% and 98.5% of the items, this was only 36.4% for TRMS. Emotional neutrality happened in 98.2% (host) and 93.5% (first person other than host to talk) of the items of Evening News, in respectively 59.5% and 33.8% of CNN Tonight and in 12.9% and 38% of the items of TRMS. TRMS referenced other news media in 66.7% of the items, whereas this was only 16.7% and 34.4% for Evening News and CNN Tonight.
For political satire all the shows broadly shared the same characteristics, except for Full Frontal, who was negative towards Trump in 86.5% of the items (compared to 63-69% for the other political satire shows) and emotionally neutral in 2.7% of the items (compared to 11-15%). The Daily Show used experts in 40.6% of the items, whereas this was only 14.3% for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and between 22% and 27% for the other two shows. Full Frontal was far less personal (10.8%) than the other satire shows (between 28% and 31%).
An one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed a significant difference between groups for news programmes, F (2) = 61.94, p < .001. Bonferroni showed a mean difference between 1.43 and 4.53 minutes, with Evening News having the shortest items and CNN Tonight having the longest. An ANOVA for political satire showed that there was not a significant difference between groups, F (3) = 2.63, p = .050. This becomes more clear when looking at the Bonferroni test, showing that between the shows there was a significance level between p
24
= .104 and p = 1.000. An ANOVA for total length of soundbites showed a significant difference between groups for news programme, F (2) = 9.15, p < .001. CNN Tonight and TRMS used significantly (p = .005 and p < .001) longer total of soundbites than Evening News (Mdifference of
22.80 and 29.52 seconds). The ANOVA for political satire showed a significant difference between groups for political satire, F(3) = 22.21, p < .001. All shows except for TDS and Full Frontal differed significantly (between p < .001 and p = .003) from each other with a mean difference between 27.73 and 72.49 seconds. For Hypothesis 3 there were no outstanding differences between the programmes, except that TRMS used different jokes than the other two news programmes. Comparing time periods and programmes did also not lead to outstanding differences.
Discussion
This study looked at the period after the election and after the inauguration of Donald Trump as 45th President of the United States to see if the unexpected victory and the unprecedented events that followed this victory turned political satire into performing a similar news function as traditional news programmes. This study demonstrates that this was not the case; political satire was less objective, less interpretative and focused mainly on their escapist role compared to traditional news programmes. Unexpectedly, there was no clear difference between news functions of political satire and traditional news programmes in the period after the election compared to the period after the inauguration.
Political satire was significantly more negative and emotional than news programmes, similar to previous research reported by Haigh and Heresco (2010) and Niven et al. (2003). Because political satire also used less independent experts than news programmes, differences in coverage of Trump in terms of objectivity was found. Both programmes in the research sample that are presented by a woman (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS)) stand out as more negative and emotional. Additional research is
25
necessary to see whether this is an individual case, a gender-based pattern or whether it was a gender bias of the coders, as women are typically seen as more emotional (Feldman Barrett, Robin, Pietromonaco & Eyssel, 1998). As Samantha Bee is currently the only female satire host in America, such research could be done internationally to get a better sample.
Commercial motivations (Costera Meijer, 2003) and time restrictions on items (Cushion et al., 2014) for news media did not lead to a more interpretative role for political satire. Whereas Fox et al. (2007) found that for the 2004 presidential campaign TDS news stories were longer than in traditional news programmes, this study found otherwise for after the 2016 presidential election. Both CNN Tonight and TRMS had longer news stories than the political satire programmes. News programmes focused clearly on policy issues, whereas political satire also mentioned personal issues quite often.
However, during coding it became clear that the Trump election and presidency combined personal and policy in a way not shown by any previous other presidential candidate. As the distinction between personal and policy was blurred, this could have affected the outcome. However, Table 3 does not show unusual results for any of the categories, so an affected outcome did not seem to be the case. Similar to previous research by Niven et al. (2003) and Fox et al. (2007), political satire used longer total length of soundbites in an item than news media. Yet, this finding was mainly due to long soundbites in Late Night with Seth Meyers, as all other analysed programmes in the two genres had similar total length of soundbites.
Political satire is mostly focused on the escapism and ‘sanity’ role that Jones (2005) reported. Most of the political satire jokes are escapist or dramatic, aiming for audiences to release stress through laughing at the ridiculousness of the joke (Meyer, 2000). While political satire displayed more of a shared consciousness than news media, neither mention this often. Whether satirists do create a shared identity, based on the ideas of Hanitzsch and Vos (2018),
26
is interesting for further studies and can possibly be performed through a survey among political satire audiences.
Time period was a moderating variable on the difference between the two genres and their referencing of other news media. While political satire mentioned more other news media after the inauguration (+12.9%), news programmes mentioned less (-6.4%). Political satire also used 10% more escapist and dramatic jokes after the inauguration compared to after the election and spoke 23.6% more on policy issues after the inauguration compared to after the election. These differences in the time periods could be due to the controversial policies President Trump emplaced when he was in office and controversies surrounding Trump and Russian election involvement (Fisher, 2016). However, for most variables there was no significant difference between the time periods.
This study found evidence against journalists supposed “ritual of objectivity” (Tuchanan, 1972) and lack off emotionality (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013) on news channels. While Evening News appeared a truly traditional (emotionally) neutral news programme, this was not the case for CNN Tonight and certainly not for TRMS. In future studies on news programmes, a possible distinction between news programmes that are (emotionally) neutral or not needs to be considered.
So what do these results mean for a deliberative democracy? The subjectivity of political satire as a whole could harm the ideal of a deliberative conversation and popular inclusion (Ferree et al., 2002) as they are not inviting those with a different political view. It is known that humorous messages make the audiences better absorb the content (Boukes et al., 2015). However, this study showed that the content of political satire does not measure up on journalistic role conceptions with traditional news. And if the content is less interpretative and objective as in news programmes, using political satire as an actual news source could mean only learning fragments of the news (Bennett, 2007). Thus, the results of this study could worry
27
those who believe that to have a functioning democracy, citizens need a certain level of political knowledge.
However, it is unrealistic to think that people suddenly renew interest in television news, as this has been diminishing for years (Pew Research Centre, 2017). The gateway theory of Baum (2003) states that soft news (like satire) can function as gateway to traditional news, also backed up by research of Young and Tissinger (2006) and Feldman and Young (2008). At this day and age political satire might function as a gateway to learn more about a subject through turning to traditional or online news.
This study is not without limitations. Due to time restrictions only a couple of political satire and news programmes could be reviewed. While a comparison as in this study had not been done before, the results leave some questions for broader generalisations, such as the complete objectivity of Evening News: is this a coincidence or the standard of broadcast television? Such a question can only be answered through further research with a larger sample size of broadcast television programmes.
Secondly, this case study is set in the period after the 2016 election and inauguration of Trump. This period was chosen as the unexpected outcome might have led to a more journalistic role for political satire. To get an even better understanding of this role, a neutral time period such as before Trump announced his candidacy could have been used to compare. While Full Frontal and LSSC did not air before Trump’s 2016 Presidential announcement, future studies could choose a more “politically quiet” time period to study.
The codebook used for this study was checked twice for intercoder reliability and as the results differed quite a bit, future studies should keep this in mind when using similar variables. It is important to conduct an extensive coder training to explain the variables as this did not happen for the second coder in this study and therefore reliability decreased. After proper training was given to the third coder, reliability of the coding increased.
28
Satirists may view themselves more as entertainers, but their role could change in the future. If the current American political situation keeps following an unprecedented path, satirists could slowly turn more interpretative. At the same time, news anchors have revealed a desire to be more expressive in their reporting, following Jon Stewart (Abel & Barthel, 2013). It appeared that some news programmes have already followed Stewart’s subjectivity and emotionality in some of their reporting. So even though this study found that US political satire and traditional US news media are still far apart in terms of objectivity and an interpreter role and satirists still mainly focus on their escapism role, time will tell to what extent this will change with unknown stability of the US political future.
References
Abel, A.D. & Barthel, M. (2013). Appropriation of Mainstream News: How Saturday Night Live Changed the Political Discussion. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30(1). 1-16, DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2012.701011
Alonso, P. (2018). Satiric TV in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Althaus, S.L. (2011). What’s Good and Bad in Political Communication Research? Normative Standards for Evaluating Media and Citizen Performance. In H. Semetko & M.
Scammell (eds). Sage Handbook of Political Communication. London: Sage Publications.
Andersen, K. & Hopmann, D.N. (2018). Compensator, Amplifier, or Distractor? The Moderating Role of Informal Political Talk on the Effect of News Media Use on Current-Affairs Learning Among First-Time Voters. Political Communication, 35(4). 634-654.
A pride of presidents. (1991, Feb 18). New York Times (1923-Current File). Retrieved from http://proxy.uba.uva.nl:2048/docview/108849544?accountid=14615
29
Bailey, R. (2018). When journalism and satire merge: The implications for impartiality, engagement and ‘post-truth’ politics – A UK perspective on the serious side of US TV comedy. European Journal of Communication, 33(2), 200–213. DOI:
10.1177/026732311876032
Baym, G. (2005). The Daily Show: Discursive integration and the reinvention of political journalism. Political Communication, 22(3), 259-276. DOI:
10.1080/10584600591006492
Becker, A.B. & Goldberg, A.B. (2017). Entertainment, Intelligent, or Hybrid Programming? An Automated Content Analysis of 12 Years of Political Satire Interviews. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 25(2), 127-137. DOI: 10.1080/15456870.2017.1293670 Bennett, W.L. (2007). Relief in Hard Times: A Defense of Jon Stewart's Comedy in an Age of
Cynicism. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(3), 278-283. DOI: 10.1080/07393180701521072
Boukes, M., Boomgaarden, H.G., Moorman, M. & De Vreese, C.H. (2015). At Odds: Laughing and Thinking? The Appreciation, Processing, and Persuasiveness of Political Satire. Journal of Communication, 65, 721-744.
Brewer, S. & Dundes, L. (2018). Concerned, meet terrified: Intersectional feminism and the Women’s March. Women’s Studies International Forum, 69. 49-55. DOI:
10.1016/j.wsif.2018.04.008
Canfield, D. (2017). Why Stephen Colbert is suddenly the most popular person in late night. Business Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/late-show-ratings-
stephen-colbert-is-the-most-popular-in-late-night-2017-2?international=true&r=US&IR=T
30
journalism: An analysis of political reporting on US and UK evening news bulletins. International Communication Gazette, 76(6). 443-463. DOI:
10.1177/1748048514533860
Darr, J.P. & Dunaway, J.L. (2018). Resurgent Mass Partisanship Revisited: The Role of Media Choice in Clarifying Elite Ideology. American Politics Research, 46(6). 943-970. DOI: 10.1177/1532673X17735042
Dejongckheere, M, Fisher, A. & Chang, T. (2018) How has the presidential election affected young Americans? Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Mental Health, 12(8).
DOI: 10.1186/s13034-018-0214-7
Esser, F. (2008). Dimensions of Political News Cultures: Sound Bite and Image Bite News in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Press/Politics, 13(4), 401-428. DOI: 10.1177/1940161208323691
Feldman Barrett, L., Robin, L., Pietromonaco, P.R. & Eyssell, K.M. (1998). Are Women the “More Emotional” Sex? Evidence From Emotional Experiences in Social Context. Social Context, Cognition & Emotion, 12(4). 555-578.
DOI:10.1080/026999398379565
Ferree, M.M., Gamson, W.A., Gerhards, J. & Rucht, D. (2002). Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies. Theory and Society, 31. 289-324.
Fisher, M. (2016). Russia and the U.S. Election: What We Know and Don’t Know. The New York Times. Retrieved from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/world/europe/russia-trump-election-cia-fbi.html Fluri, J.L. & Clark, J.H. (2019). Political Geographies of Humor and Adversity. Political
Geography, 68, 122-124.
31
Coverage of Presidential Election Campaigns. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(1), 97-109.
Fox, J.R., Kohoen, G. & Sahin, V. (2007). No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Presidential Election Campaign. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 51(2), 213-227. DOI: 10.1080/08838150701304621
Ghasemi Tari, G.Z. & Emamzadeh, Z. (2018). An Analysis of the Media Messages during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: A Thematic Comparison between CNN News and Donald Trump’s Tweets. Journal of Politics and Law, 11(2). 78-87. DOI:
10.5539/jpl.v11n2p78
Gil de Zuniga, H. & Hinsley, A. (2013). The Press Versus the Public, Journalism Studies, 14(6). 926-942, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2012.744551
Gleiberman, O. (2016). The New Era of Political Absurdity. Variety, 334(7). 17-18.
Haigh, M.M & Heresco, A. (2010). Late-Night Iraq: Monologue Joke Content and Tone From 2003 to 2007. Mass Communication and Society, 13(2). 157-173, DOI:
10.1080/15205430903014884
Hanitzsch, T. & Vos, T.P. (2018). Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life. Journalism, 19(2). 146-164. DOI:
10.1177/1464884916673386
Hanson, G. & Haridakis, P. (2008). YouTube Users Watching and Sharing the News: A Uses and Gratifications Approach. The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 11(3). DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0011.305
Healy, P. & Peters, J.W. (2016). Donald Trump’s Victory Is Met With Shock Across a Wide Political Divide. New York Times. Retrieved from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/politics/donald-trump-election-reaction.html Holbert, R. L. (2005). A Typology for the Study of Entertainment Television and Politics.
32
American Behavioral Scientist, 49(3). 436-453. DOI: 10.1177/0002764205279419 Itzkoff, D. (2017). Seth Meyers Confronts the Trump Era on ‘Late Night’. New York Times.
Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/arts/television/seth-meyers-late-night-donald-trump.html
Jones, J.P. (2005). Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Katz, J. (2016). Who Will Be President? New York Times. Retrieved from:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y. & Ryan, J.B. (2019). Is America Hopelessly Polarized, or Just
Allergic to Politics? New York Times. Retrieved from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/opinion/polarization-politics-democrats-republicans.html
Kovach, B. & Rosenstiel, T. (2014). The Elements of Journalism (3rd edition). New York: Three Rivers Press.
Lecheler, S., Bos, L. & Vliegenthart, R. (2015). The Mediating Role of Emotions: News Framing Effects on Opinions About Immigration. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(4). 812-838. DOI: 10.1177/1077699015596338
Lee, H. & Jang, S.M. (2017). Talking About What Provokes Us: Political Satire, Emotions, and Interpersonal Talk. American Politics Research, 45(1). 128-154. DOI:
10.1177/1532673X16657805
Lee, H. & Kwak. N. (2014). The Affect Effect of Political Satire: Sarcastic Humor, Negative Emotions, and Political Participation. Mass Communication and Society, 17(3). 307-328. DOI: 10.1080/15205436.2014.891133
33
Magazine. Retrieved from: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/07/ranking-the-current-late-night-talk-show-hosts-jul.html
Matthes, J. & Rauchfleisch, A. (2013). The Swiss “Tina Fey Effect”: The Content of Late- Night Political Humor and the Negative Effects of Political Parody on the Evaluation of Politicians. Communication Quarterly, 61(5). 596-614. DOI:
10.1080/01463373.2013.822405
McChesney (1999). Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
McKain, A. (2005). Not Necessarily Not the News: Gatekeeping, Remediation, and The Daily Show. The Journal of American Culture, 28(4). 415-430. DOI:
10.1111/j.1542-734X.2005.00244.x
Meddaugh, P.M. (2010). Bakhtin, Colbert, and the Center of Discourse: Is
There No “Truthiness” in Humor? Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27(4). 376-390.
Meyer, J.C. (2000). Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication. Communication Theory, 10(3). 310-331.
Miller, Z.J. & Scherer, M. (2017). President Trump Attacks 'Lunatic,' 'No-Talent,' 'Dumbest Person' in TV. Time Magazine. Retrieved from: http://time.com/4775633/donald-trump-stephen-colbert-cnn-msnbc-chris-cuomo/
Morgan, R. (2017). Colbert’s full-season victory over Jimmy Fallon is official. New York Post. Retrieved from: https://nypost.com/2017/06/13/colberts-full-season-victory-over-jimmy-fallon-is-official/
McQuail, D. (2010). McQuail's Mass Communication Theory (6th edition). London/Thousand Oaks: Sage.
34
into the Persuasive Effect of Funny Social Issue Messages. Communication Monographs, 74(1). 29-54. DOI: 10.1080/03637750701196896
Nichols, M. (2016). Disbelief, questions at United Nations after Trump victory. Reuters. Retrieved from: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-un/disbelief-questions-at-united-nations-after-trump-victory-idUKKBN134374
Niven, D. S., Lichter, R., & Amundson, D. (2003). The political content of late night comedy. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 8. 118–133. DOI:
10.1177/1081180X03008003007
Gottfried, J. & Shearer, L. (2017). Americans’ online news use is closing in on TV news use. Pew Research Centre. Retrieved from:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/07/americans-online-news-use-vs-tv-news-use/
Patterson, T.E. (2003).The Search for a Standard: Markets and Media. Political Communication, 20(2). 139-143, DOI: 10.1080/10584600390211154
Rottinghaus, B., Bird, K., Ridout, T. & Self, R. (2008). “It’s Better Than Being Informed”. In J.C. Baumgartner & J.S. Morris, J.S. Laughing Matters: Humor and American
Politics in the Media Age. New York: Routledge. 279-294.
Scherr, S., Bachl, M. & De Vreese, C.H. (2018). Searching for Watchdogs: Investigating Journalistic Role Performance Using Latent-Class Analysis. Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2018.1533417
Sotirovic, M., & McLeod, J. M. (2004). Knowledge as understanding: The information processing approach to political learning. In L. L. Kaid (Ed.), Political communication research (pp. 357-395). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Stelter, B. (2008). MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/media/08msnbc.html Strömbäck, J. (2005). In Search of a Standard: four models of democracy and their normative
35
implications for journalism, Journalism Studies, 6(3). 331-345, DOI: 10.1080/14616700500131950
Sullivan, A., Stephenson, E. & Holland, S. (2017). Trump says won’t divest from his business while president. Reuters. Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-
trump-finance/trump-says-wont-divest-from-his-business-while-president-idUSKBN14V21I
Tuchman, G. (1972). Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen’s notions of objectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77. 660–679.
Victor, D. (2016). Trump’s Victory, on Front Pages Worldwide. New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/business/media/trumps-victory-on-front-pages-worldwide.html
Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2013). The strategic ritual of emotionality: A case study of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles. Journalism, 14(1). 129-145. DOI: 10.1177/1464884912448918 Wessler, H. & Rinke, E.M. (2014). Deliberative Performance of Television News in Three
Types of Democracy: Insights from the United States, Germany, and Russia. Journal of Communication, 64. 827-851. DOI: 10.1111/jcom.12115
Williams, A. P., Martin, J. D., Trammell, K. D., Landreville, K., & Ellis, C. (2004). Late- night talk shows and war: Entertaining and informing through humor. In R. D. Berenger (Eds.), Global media go to war: Role of news and entertainment media during the 2003 Iraq War (pp. 131–138). Spokane, WA: Marquette.
Witte, G. & Denver, S. (2016). After Trump’s victory, the world is left to wonder: What happened to America? Washington Post. Retrieved from:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-allies-look-on-anxiously-as-trump-takes- commanding-position-in-presidential-race/2016/11/09/c246dd4c-a63e-11e6-9bd6-184ab22d218e_story.html?utm_term=.c2e7a7d5f40b
36
Wolff, M. (2018). Fire and Fury. London: Abacus.
Wurff, R. van der. & Schoenbach, K. (2014). Civic and Citizen Demands of News Media and Journalists: What Does the Audience Expect from Good Journalism? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(3). 433-451. DOI: 10.1177/1077699014538974
Appendix 1.
Coding calender
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Not on tv on the following days: December 19th 2016
January 23th 2017
January 25th 2017
Late Night with Seth Meyers Not on archive.org:
January 4th 2017
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Not on tv on the following days: November 21 and 23rd 2016
December 12th 2016 (whole episode is interview with Obama)
December 19th 2016 February 22nd 2017
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Not on tv:
November 16, 21, 23 and 30 2016 January 9, 16, 23, 30 2017
February 6, 13, 22, 27 2017 March 20, 272017
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley Coded every Monday and Wednesday CNN Tonight with Don Lemon
Not on archive.org/not on tv (not clear): November 23rd 2016
December 7th 2016
January 9th 2017
February 1, 6, 13, 15 and 20 2017 Not on tv:
February 22nd 2017 (debate instead of CNN Tonight) The Rachel Maddow Show:
37
Not on archive.org: November 30th 2016
December 5th 2016 February 1st 2017
Coded days for first intercoder reliability check:
November 10th 2016: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert November 15th 2016: Late Night with Seth Meyers
November 16th 2016: Evening News with Scott Pelley
November 17th 2016: CNN Tonight with Don Lemon November 18th 2016: The Rachel Maddow Show December 5th 2016: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
January 23rd 2017: The Rachel Maddow Show January 24th 2017: Evening News with Scott Pelley January 25th 2017: CNN Tonight with Don Lemon
January 26th 2017: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah January 30th 2017: Late Night With Seth Meyers
January 31st 2017: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
February 1st 2017: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee
Appendix 2
Codebook
Before starting the coding, first will be identified whether the item is about Trump. Using “CTRL+F + Trump” when the item is transcribed on archive.org. When it comes to a YouTube video, a video is looked at if the title or the description bar mentions Trump or is recognized as about Trump, if this is not clear, the item will be watched.
Administrative variables
After identifying that the item mentions Trump, code the following administrative variables: Q1 Identification number: Number of unit that is analysed:
DDMM-programmeID-item number
Q2 Programme ID: 01: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 02: NBC Late Night With Seth Meyers
03: CC The Daily Show with Trevor Noah 04: TBS Full Frontal with Samantha Bee 05: CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley 06: CNN Tonight with Don Lemon 07: MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show
