Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville and Michael A. Beam: The Irony of Satire

(This is an important study for of the problems of "communication" and the importance of audience awareness/perception in the production of textual meaning and how readers/viewers interactively create meaning in tandem with the creators. As the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris states: "Believing is seeing and not the other way around." From the report below: "Biased Message Processing" is now my term for the day :)

The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report
Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville and Michael A. Beam
International Journal of Press Politics 14.1 (April 2009)

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert
Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert’s political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert’s political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

To Read the Report (PDF file)

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