Political Humour
From Have I Got News for You in the UK to The Daily Show in the US as well as the proliferation of related online media such as memes, political satire is a common feature of mainstream broadcasting and social media discourse. It is also one of the primary gateways through which many people, otherwise turned off by politics, learn about and engage with it. In turn, political humour can be distinctly partisan and ideological, insofar as those on the Left and Right of politics have very different ideas about what’s funny, when and why. The following texts provide an introduction to how political humour is used, how it is received by a range of audiences, and how it can impact political outcomes.
Introduction:
Young, D. (2017). Theories and Effects of Political Humour: Discounting Cues, Gateways, and the Impact of Incongruities. In K. Kenski and K.H. Jamieson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online here.
Category 1: Political humour in the media.
Niven, D., Lichter, S. R., and Amundson, D. (2003). The Political Content of Late Night Comedy. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 8(3), 118–133.
Baumgartner, J. C. (2007). Humour on the Next Frontier: Youth, Online Political Humour, and the JibJab Effect. Social Science Computer Review, Vol. 25(3), 319–338.
Brewer, P.R., and Marquardt, E. (2007). Mock News and Democracy: Analysing The Daily Show, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Vol. 15:4, 249-267.
Category 2: Individual and group effects.
Billig, M. (2001). Humour and Embarrassment: Limits of ‘Nice-guy’ Theories of Social Life. Theory, Culture, and Society, Vol. 18(5): 23-43.
Nabi, R.L., Moyer-Gusé, E., and Byrne, S. (2007). All Joking Aside: A Serious Investigation into the Persuasive Effect of Funny Social Issue Messages, Communication Monographs, Vol. 74:1, 29-54.
Young, D.G. (2008). The Privileged Role of the Late-Night Joke: Exploring Humour's Role in Disrupting Argument Scrutiny. Media Psychology, Vol. 11:1, 119-142.
Dagnes, A. (2012). A conservative walks into a bar. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Especially chapter 5.
Becker, A. B. (2014). Playing with politics: Online political parody, affinity for political humour, anxiety reduction, and implications for political efficacy. Mass Communication and Society, Vol. 17: 424–445.
Peifer, J. T., and Holbert, R. L. (2016). Appreciation of pro-attitudinal versus counter-attitudinal political humour: A cognitive consistency approach to the study of political entertainment. Communication Quarterly, Vol. 64: 16–35.
Lee, H., and Jang, S. Mo. (2017). Talking About What Provokes Us. American Politics Research, Vol. 45(1): 128-54.
Young, D. G., Bagozzi, B. E., Goldring, A., Poulsen, S., and Drouin, E. (2019). Psychology, political ideology, and humour appreciation: Why is satire so liberal? Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Vol. 8(2), 134–147.