Political Humor, Sharing, and Remembering: Insights from Neuroimaging

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason C Coronel ◽  
Matthew B O’Donnell ◽  
Prateekshit Pandey ◽  
Michael X Delli Carpini ◽  
Emily B Falk
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Behavioral Experiments ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Political Comedy ◽  
Informed Citizenry

Abstract Over the last two decades, news-oriented comedy programs have risen to compete with traditional hard news media as sources of information about politics. To the extent that a politically knowledgeable electorate is necessary for a thriving democracy, understanding the mechanisms underlying the extent to which political comedy facilitates or inhibits a well-informed citizenry is critical. Across two studies, we use behavioral experiments and neuroimaging to examine the causal effects of humor on the desire to share and the capacity to remember political information. We find that humor increases the likelihood to share political information with others and enhances people’s memory for information. Humor also increases brain response in regions associated with understanding other people’s mental states (i.e., mentalizing), which advances a theoretical framework that humor may facilitate considerations of others’ views (e.g., how other people will respond to shared political information).

No laughing matter? Young adults and the “spillover effect” of candidate-centered political humor

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Baumgartner
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
News Media ◽  
Spillover Effect ◽  
Online Video ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Political Comedy ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Attitudinal Effects

AbstractIs there a spillover effect among young adults that results from viewing candidate-centered political comedy? A panel survey was conducted where one half of the subjects, all aged 18–24, viewed four short animated online video clips lambasting the candidates during the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign. Results suggest that a negative schema was primed among viewers as the result of viewing this candidate-centered political humor, which appears to have guided evaluations of other political objects as well. In particular, viewers of the clips evaluated public officials, government and the news media lower than did non-viewers. The research adds to our understanding of the effects of political humor, suggesting that the attitudinal effects of political humor extend well beyond its explicit target.

Political Knowledge and Misinformation in the Era of Social Media: Evidence From the 2015 UK Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Media Platform

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.

scholarly journals News Media Exposure and Political Communication among Libyan Elites at the Time of War

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Abdul-Karim Ziani ◽  
Mokhtar Elareshi ◽  
Khalid Al-Jaber
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media

Abstract Many critical questions concerning the relationship between the news media and political knowledge involve the extent to which the media facilitate learning about news, war and politics. Political awareness - via the news media - affects virtually every aspect of citizens’ political attitudes and behaviours. This paper examines how Libyan elites adopt the news media to access news and information regarding the current Libyan war and politics and how they use political communication and new media to build/spread political awareness. With the expansion of private and state-owned television in Libya, concern has grown that these new TV services will survive in providing information about citizens’ interests, including the new, developing political scene. A total of 134 highly educated Libyan professionals completed an online survey, reporting their perceptions of issues covered by national TV services. This account centres on how those elites consume the media and what level of trust they have in the media and in information and what the role of the media in their country should be. The results show that most respondents, especially those who live outside the country, prefer using different Libyan news platforms. However, 50 per cent of these do not trust these channels as a source of information regarding the civil war, associated conflicts and politics in general. They have grown weary of coverage that represents the interests of those who run or own the services and consequently place little trust in the media. Spreading ‘lies as facts’ has affected the credibility of these services. Politically, these respondents wish the media to discuss solutions and act as a force for good, not for division. They also differed in the number and variety of national news sources that they reportedly used. This paper also highlights the role of social media, mobile telephony and the Internet, as well as the rapidly proliferating private and national media. These findings are also discussed in relation to the growing impact of online sources in Libyan society, social and political change and the emergence of new media platforms as new sources of information.

scholarly journals Media and science. The handling of scientific information on SARS-CoV-2 in Mexican media

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Saúl Hernández Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
News Media ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Scientific Databases ◽  
National Media ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Face

The use and management of scientific sources of information, made by the Mexican media, regarding SARS-CoV-2 is analyzed. It is investigated whether four national media, two news and two opinion, resort to verified scientific sources to inform or comment on the specialized issues about the virus. An exploratory study was carried out on the number of scientific publications made on the virus in scientific databases and in three preprint repositories. Subsequently, a content analysis of four Mexican media was conducted to identify the sources and use of specialized information regarding SARS-CoV-2. Frequently, the news media rely on agency content, although in its original content there is a use-learning curve that allows forecasting best practices The opinion media delve into reflection, but its editorial line is dominant in the face of the scientific approach to the current issue.

scholarly journals Gender Bias in the Media: The Case of Iceland

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir ◽  
Þorgerður Einarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
The People ◽  
The Media ◽  
Area Of Concern ◽  
Media Monitoring ◽  
The Relationship

The news media are the most influential sources of information, ideas and opinion for most people around the world. Who appears in the news and who is left out, what is covered and what is not and how people and events are portrayed matter. Research has consistently shown that women are underrepresented in the news and that gender stereotypes are reinforced in and through the media. The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognised the relationship between women and media as a major area of concern in achieving gender equality in contemporary societies. This article presents Nordic findings from the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which is the largest and longest-running study on gender in the world’s media. The findings show that women account for only 1 in 5 of the people interviewed or reported on by Icelandic news media and that women’s overall presence in the news has declined compared to the last GMMP study in 2010. The proportion of women as news subjects is also considerably lower than in other Nordic countries. We argue that the number of women who are journalists, managers in the media industry and decision makers in society has increased, but this shift has not automatically changed the representation of women in the news, either in numbers or in their portrayal. This discrepancy indicates that the relationship between gender and the news media is complicated and needs to be approached from different perspectives.

The Gatekeeping of Political Messages

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Television News ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Blog Posts

Simply put, gatekeeping involves deciding which messages to send to others and how to shape them. Billions of events occur each day, many with political ramifications, but there are more events than the news media can cover or even know about. Political information competes with all other topics to pass through source and media gates. Politicians create forces that constrain or facilitate this passage, but making it through one gate is usually not sufficient. Multiple gates in source, media, and audience channels winnow messages until we have those few that become television news stories or blog posts. To explain this process, gatekeeping theory was proposed in the late 1940s by Kurt Lewin; it is one of the older theories applied to the study of mass communication.

From Information Availability to Factual Accountability

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Graves ◽  
Chris Wells
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Information Availability ◽  
Information Order

Theories of democracy in communication studies have emphasized the importance of citizens encountering quality political information and incorporating that information into their views. These emphases on exposure tend to take the truth of the information being consumed for granted. Today, the problem of truth has become more visible, inviting reconsideration of how we expect truth to operate in democratic society. In this chapter, we suggest the need to consider not only the availability of information but also the conditions under which leaders and other communicators are held accountable for the veracity of their claims—a process we call factual accountability. We argue that members of the political elite, news media, and citizens each have roles to play in establishing factual accountability, but trends in each of these realms pose challenges to a truth-driven information order. We conclude with suggestions for reconstructing factual accountability as a basis for public conversation.

A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom About the Informed Public: National Political Information in Ghana

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred M. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
Informed Citizenry ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Different Levels

This study examines the extent, impact and implications of political information in Ghana using survey data. A major interest is to identify and examine variables which influence level of information and to look at the consequences for the political process of different levels of political information. I examine conventional wisdom concerning the ignorance of the masses about national politics and call into question some common assumptions. Many of the differences usually assumed between developed and underdeveloped nations are found either not to exist or to be smaller than hypothesized. The data suggest that in some areas of national political information the masses in non-modernized societies are more politically aware than their counterparts in modernized societies. It is also suggested that there is no necessary link between education (literacy) and political information and that there are a number of functional equivalents to formal education. In the last section of the study several propositions about the informed citizenry are discussed.

scholarly journals Who to Trust on Social Media: How Opinion Leaders and Seekers Avoid Disinformation and Echo Chambers

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512091399
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Dubois ◽  
Sara Minaeian ◽  
Ariane Paquet-Labelle ◽  
Simon Beaudry
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Information Verification ◽  
Low Levels

As trust in news media and social media dwindles and fears of disinformation and echo chambers spread, individuals need to find ways to access and assess reliable and trustworthy information. Despite low levels of trust in social media, they are used for accessing political information and news. In this study, we examine the information verification practices of opinion leaders (who consume political information above average and share their opinions on social media above average) and of opinion seekers (who seek out political information from friends and family) to understand similarities and differences in their news media trust, fact-checking behaviors, and likeliness of being caught in echo chambers. Based on a survey of French Internet users ( N = 2,000) we find that not only opinion leaders, but also opinion seekers, have higher rates across all three of these dependent variables. We discuss the implications of findings for the development of opinion leadership theory as well as for social media platforms wishing to increase trust.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document