Who Gets the Joke?

Using humor scholar Salvatore Attardo’s criteria for humor appreciation as a framework, this chapter describes the kinds of people who might be expected to have the greatest appreciation of humor. It explores joke difficulty, the level of threat a joke may activate in a listener, the available knowledge in the minds of the audience, and their processing motivation as factors that affect humor appreciation. The chapter links the traits of tolerance for ambiguity and need for cognition to humor appreciation, as both enhance an individual’s motivation and ability to process and appreciate a joke. It also includes a deep dive into the strange case of irony (with reference to All in the Family and The Colbert Report), which audiences can appreciate even when their interpretation is the opposite of the intended meaning of the joke’s producer.

Comedic News

With the new millennium came a new source of political information–comedic news. Though it existed prior to the 21st century–indeed, its roots can be traced to 17th-century English country fairs–the genre came into its own during the 2004 presidential election, when young voters in particular began to rely on comedic news as their primary source of political information. The rise in popularity and influence of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its first spin-off, The Colbert Report, raised a number of concerns and consequently research questions for scholars to examine. How do comedic news shows compare to serious journalism? What questions and concerns do comedic news shows raise about serious journalism? Can comedic news shows serve as a gateway to greater attention to serious news? How is comedic news viewership related to attention to politics, political knowledge, and learning about politics? Does viewing comedic news influence attitudes toward politics and the media, particularly cynicism, and does partisanship moderate these effects? Is there a relationship between viewing and political participation? More broadly, what is the role of comedic news in the political system? This bibliography provides a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, collection of mostly empirical studies addressing these research questions that uphold standards of good social science. For example, experiments should include multiple messages to instantiate study conditions and random assignment to conditions. Thus this bibliography should be particularly useful for those interested in scientific evidence about the influence of these shows. Empirical studies in this emerging area come primarily from political science and communication and thus draw on a number of different theories, and not all studies in this area include explicit theoretical underpinnings. While there is no common theoretical thread running throughout the studies included here, perhaps as this literature matures we will see more, and more common, theoretical grounding to studies of comedic news. In the meantime, although The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its first and second spin-offs, The Colbert Report and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, are no longer running, The Daily Show with its new host, Trevor Noah, is, as are new shows by two former Daily Show reporters, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, giving viewers plenty more comedic news to enjoy and scholars more material to explore as this emerging genre and related field of study evolve.