When Jokes become Realities—Can we do more than Satires?

With only three weeks left to the election, this craziest campaign in the history finally is going to the end. While we are not sure who is going to win the election, it is certain that the biggest winner are those political satirists who quickly noticed in the very beginning that this campaign is the gold mine for people who works in entertainment business—which campaign can create more jokes than this one? However, as we may laugh out loud while watching those talk shows, sometimes we may still wondering—is it really a good thing that the campaign is such a joke? Are we really learn from it or it is just a waste of time?

Well, according researchers, no matter how crazy this campaign may look like. The citizens are still learning from them. Even those political comedy shows are good for politics engaging. For example, Baumgartner and Morris (2006) showed that watching  political talkshows like The Daily Shows can enhance audience’s confidence in their own ability to understand the politics. Through watching political talkshows, those complicated politics seems more friendly to “ordinary people”. Meanwhile, Cao and Brewer (2007) also conclude from their research that watching political comedies are positively associated with your political participation. This result could have two possible interpretations—whether those people who watch the political comedies are more willing to participate in politics or those who are politically active are more likely to watch those political talkshow. No matter which interpretation it is, one thing is clear: political comedies are not bad for political engagement.

But is that enough? No, political engagement should be more than that. It is not enough for a democratic society that people only watch those talkshows and doing nothing else. People should use the interest and knowledge they learned from the comedies and become more active citizens—they should be more willing to vote, be more knowledgeable on political issues and be more sharply to the politics. However, when we talks about political engagement, we will confront a classic dilemma—politics, no matter how easy you make it seems like, will in the end become too complicated to the audiences. People loves easy things, loves those things can make them laugh and those issues which are easy to define. How to balance the gap between soft politics and hard politics become a constant debate in the field.

According to Dannagal Young, the associate professor who teaches satire and the psychology of political humor at the University of Delaware, what John Oliver is doing in his show Last Week Tonight may bridge the gap between soft politics and hard politics. “He’s interacting with a topic, not just commenting or issuing a broad judgment,” when interviewed by the Guardian in 2014, she talks about the change of contemporary satirists’ character—from an outsider that lies outside the political spectrum like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to “a prankster who is enjoying using his soapbox to steer his viewers toward mischief” like John Oliver. Will John Oliver’s show encouraging more intensive political engagement? We don’t know the answer, but as a political researcher and a citizen, I really hope that the talk show and entertainment politics can have more impacts on encouraging people to involve into politics.

 

By Chih-Ling Chang