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Exploring Relations between Political Entertainment Media and Traditional Political Communication Information Outlets

A Research Agenda

R. Lance Holbert and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young

The Rise of Political Entertainment

The study of political entertainment media has grown exponentially in recent years (e.g., Baumgartner & Morris, 2008). Political communication scholars studying media influence historically did so solely in the context of news (e.g., Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). But more recently, scholars have begun to recognize and stress the importance of entertainment content as an agent of political influence as well (see Holbert, Garrett, & Gleason, 2010). Among the kinds of political entertainment that have garnered scholarly attention are: late night talk shows (e.g., The Late Show with David Letterman or The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), daytime talk shows (e.g., Oprah), political satire programs (e.g., The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report), entertainment-oriented news programs (e.g., Entertainment Tonight), situation comedies (e.g., The Simpsons; see Cantor, 1999), as well as dramatic TV programming (e.g., Law & Order; Holbrook & Hill, 2005). These diverse forms of political entertainment media have been shown to impact the full range of the hierarchy of effects, from salience (e.g., relative importance of a political issue; see Young, 2006), to knowledge (e.g., knowing the number of US troops deployed to Iraq; see Baum, 2003), to attitudes (e.g., feeling thermometer rating of President George W. Bush; see Holbert et al., 2003a), to behaviors (e.g., voting; see Cao & Brewer, 2008). It is clear from this empirical research that political entertainment content has the ability to generate democratic influences.

In spite of the abundance of confirmatory evidence in this arena, the study of the effects of political entertainment continues to lack a systematic approach, a cohesive theoretical perspective (Holbert, 2005), and an acknowledgement of broad historical, political and technological shifts underlying the growing phenomenon. The pages that follow will explicate the advances made in this emerging area of research – across studies of content, audiences, and effects. But more importantly, this chapter will identify ways in which each of these areas of study might better contribute to the broader conversation concerning political entertainment's role in today's political world. Areas of promise across the field are identified and the benefits of subtle, complex theoretical approaches are explored. Finally, the chapter articulates the imperative need for scholars in this domain to allow historical context to inform their models of media effects, and to work across epistemological traditions to capitalize on the wealth of insights emerging from our colleagues in more humanistic traditions.

In the Message is the Mechanism: The Importance of Content

Scholars have begun to systematically quantify the content within and across political entertainment programming. In fact, content analyses of some of the more popular (and hence potentially influential) political satire programs (e.g., The Daily Show) have revealed important patterns and contrasts in theme and substance. Research by Fox, Koloen, and Sahin (2007) suggests that The Daily Show provides political information as substantive as the nightly broadcast television news programs found on the major US television networks. A recent content analysis of the same program by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that Jon Stewart's content is akin to that of a cable TV news program, with a focus on national politics, the press, and purposefully selected news items from the day (see http://www.journalism.org/node/10953). Such analyses will help effects scholars explicate the mechanisms that account for the various levels of impact of these programs, which, in the absence of such content analyses, would be left to mere speculation. One realm in which the importance of content analytical approaches has become apparent in the development of effects mechanisms is in the study of late night political jokes (see also Chapter 14). Studies exploring patterns in themes, targets, and topics across various late night comedy programs (Niven, Lichter, & Amundson, 2003) have aided in the development of fruitful theoretical mechanisms of cognitive effects of late night political jokes (Young, 2006).

It is interesting to note, however, that the subtleties in content and theme even within subgenres of political entertainment (e.g., late night political humor) render this task complicated, but increasingly necessary. For example, while a number of studies examine the effects of “humor” on a range of political outcomes (e.g., Nabi, Moyer-Gusé, & Byrne, 2008), it has become clear that there are several different types of political humor (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony) and hence, to treat humor as monolithic is problematic, both conceptually and empirically (Hmielowski, Holbert, Jain, Lather, & Morey, 2011a). One necessary element to a theoretically driven effects paradigm in the context of political entertainment would involve large and systematic content analyses within and across political entertainment genres. For example, Baum's (2003) content analytical work on the nature of coverage of foreign crises on “soft news” programs offered useful and widely cited insights on the breadth and depth of political entertainment's treatment of issues like war. Such work is needed in other avenues of our political entertainment landscape to begin to develop the systematic approach alluded to at the outset.

Beyond the world of quantitative content analyses, the humanistic traditions have made great strides in advancing a conversation about the content of political entertainment. Cantor (1999), for instance, argues that the political messages offered on a show like The Simpsons exist on multiple levels. The first level consists of explicit and concise explicitly satirical political arguments. These statements are often memorable for audience members, but come and go rather quickly. On a recent episode of Family Guy, for example, two of the main characters find themselves back in time in Nazi-occupied Poland. While there, they observe that one of the Nazi soldiers is wearing a McCain-Palin political button on his lapel (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIWTB8POnkg). These bits of content offer explicitly valenced political arguments (e.g., that McCain-Palin supporters are closeted Nazis). However, Cantor argues that the more subtle, and potentially more profound, political influence of a show like The Simpsons rests elsewhere. For example, The Simpsons places all public policy and political issues in the context of the nuclear family (i.e., how the traditional family is impacted by these issues). It is this broader frame through which politics is presented that Gamson (1999) defines as “lifeworld content.” Such subtle and diffuse meta-narratives are inherently tied to the genre of entertainment, and may prove to have longer-lasting effects on a citizenry than more traditional political information like news.

As long argued by scholars in the critical-cultural tradition, the political importance of popular entertainment rests in the many nuanced political messages that reside within and across texts (e.g., Press & Cole, 1999). These political messages can be linked to such public policy issues as gay rights, women's rights, abortion, and the environment (to name just a few examples; see Holbert, Shah, & Kwak, 2003b). Indeed, many of the assertions advanced by critical-cultural scholars have received empirical validation. As Holbert et al. (2003b) have stated, “many of the relationships suggested by these scholars appear to have measureable consequences” (p. 58). In short, there are many rich insights offered by critical-cultural scholars that can translate over to the offering of empirical questions that could provide understanding about a wide range of effects of political entertainment media content (see Condit, 1990 in relation to Holbert et al., 2003b).

Nowhere is this previous point better illustrated than in recent humanistic-oriented work on some of our most popular political entertainment programming, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (Gray, Jones, & Thompson, 2009). Baym (2005, 2009) argues that The Daily Show represents a new style of journalism and that elements of The Colbert Report mix together basic elements of play that are central to entertainment with factual information that is more traditionally found in news. While many scholars see the content and form of these shows as accessible and hence democratizing (Jones, 2009), not all scholars agree. Hart and Hartelius (2007), for example, argue that the nature of the political messages being offered on The Daily Show can inspire greater cynicism within young voters, a cohort already highly skeptical of politics in general. There is some empirical support to back up this claim (e.g., Baumgartner & Morris, 2006), but the nature of these effects as normatively positive versus negative is still very much in debate (Young, 2007).

The Who: The People Watching “The What”

Beyond the currently fragmented study of content and effects, the study of political entertainment would benefit from expanded and detailed analyses of the audience: Who is watching these programs? Why they are watching? And how do the characteristics of these viewers affect the extent to which they are affected by the viewing experience? Young and Tisinger (2006) offer the most systematic secondary analysis (using both Pew and NAES data) of what best predicts exposure to programs like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. Their findings suggest that younger people, and those listening to talk radio and consuming news online, are more likely to watch such political humor programming. In spite of these findings, the authors are only able to account for 14% of the variance in late night TV viewing among those who have a stated preference for The Daily Show. Clearly, there is much more we as political communication scholars need to do to better understand who is consuming this material and why.

A more recent study by Hmielowski, Holbert, and Lee (2011b), using statewide primary survey data, has been able to account for 50.7% of the variance in audience exposure to TV political satire (i.e., The Daily Show and The Colbert Report). The authors found that a parsed multiple-regression equation using only four predictor variables was able to account for almost half (48%) of the variance in exposure to televised political satire. Those four variables were: age (negative predictor), liberal cable TV exposure (positive predictor, i.e., MSNBC programming), satirical situation comedy exposure (positive predictor, i.e., The Simpsons, Family Guy), and affinity for political humor (positive predictor). The latter of these predictors, affinity for political humor, is a newly explicated individual-level audience characteristic designed to predict one's engagement with different kinds of political entertainment. Such innovative techniques illustrate the kind of subtle constructs that will prove useful to scholars studying political entertainment audiences in the future.

In addition to satisfying our mere curiosity regarding who is watching and why, capturing some of these individual-level audience characteristics has proved particularly beneficial to the development of theoretical mechanisms accounting for political entertainment's influence. Traditional political constructs like political knowledge, interest, and efficacy have been found to shape the extent to which viewers are affected by political entertainment in terms of various political outcomes including construct salience (Young, 2006), attitudes toward candidates (Baum, 2003), perceptions of news (Holbert, Lambe, Dudo, & Carlton, 2007), information seeking (Xenos & Becker, 2009), and participation (Cao & Brewer, 2008). Thus, the effects of political entertainment depend in part on prior levels of political knowledge, interest, and efficacy.

More subtle moderating effects are beginning to emerge through the study of both content and audience. For example, highlighting the complementary and reciprocal influence of political satire on perceptions of news (and vice versa), Holbert et al. (2007) illustrated that the effects of viewing political satire on viewers' perceptions of news was contingent on the order in which these programs were viewed. Much of this work has assessed the role of audience characteristics in shaping short-term outcomes (e.g., Cao, 2006). The next step involves expanding the subtle psychological and contextual constructs that shape how and to what extent political entertainment-based media effects unfold over time (e.g., transportation – i.e., the degree someone becomes consumed within a narrative; cue discounting – i.e., discarding of heuristics; cognitive elaboration; affect; political orientation like ideology or party identification).

Understanding how different kinds of people are affected by media content is not a goal unique to media effects scholars. Understanding how different kinds of people derive different meanings from media texts has also been a goal – albeit with a very different rhetorical frame – of those in the humanistic traditions for decades. As argued by cultural scholars (see Jones, 2010) the construct of the passive “audience members” ought to be reconceptualized as active participants in the consumption of political content. As scholars like Jones (2010) and Van Zoonen (2005) suggest, the act of consuming political information is a participatory act. “For better or worse,” argues Jones, “the most common and frequent form of political activity – its actual practice – comes, for most people, through their choosing, attending to, processing, and engaging a myriad of media texts about the formal political process of government and political institutions . . .” (p. 23). In these terms, viewers are participating in the deconstruction and reconstruction of messages to create their own political understandings. Indeed, as illustrated in the concept of polysemy, media scholars have long argued that popular entertainment's political influence resides in the multiplicity of political meanings that coexist within a single text. Hence, the role of viewer message construction is paramount. While the individual act of “decoding” mass media texts has its roots in this critical cultural tradition, empirical studies of the “conditional effects” of media messages continue to illustrate the importance of “message deconstruction” in shaping the outcomes experienced by different viewers. In other words, both research traditions have recognized the potential for different audience members to respond differently to the same media text.

The implications of viewers' active construction of political meaning is well-illustrated by the popular satirical comedy program, The Colbert Report. A recent study by Baumgartner and Morris (2008) found that the effects of this program may not be as intended by the show's creators. The Colbert Report is a satirical representation of a conservative political talk show (e.g., The O'Reilly Factor). The show's host, Stephen Colbert, takes on the role of ultra-conservative talk show host throughout the program and never breaks from this ironic style of presentation. Baumgartner and Morris find that this style of presentation may lead viewers to retain more positive attitudes toward political conservatives, hence suggesting that the audience does not recognize the true intent of the satirical messages within the show. Another study by LaMarre, Landreville, and Beam (2009) found that liberals and conservatives perceived the content of the Colbert Report as equally funny, but for very different reasons. Liberals found the show funny because of the way in which conservative commentators were being mocked, while conservatives found the show funny for the way in which Colbert was making fun of liberals. The former group embraced the show for its intended purpose of being a satirization of conservative talk shows, while the latter group embraced a more literal translation of the program. In the end, both groups were able to find what they wanted to find in the program, indicating that these types of biased processing effects need to be taken into account in the study of political entertainment effects (see also Vidmar & Rokeach, 1974).

Even the creators of political entertainment seem to understand that, unlike the often strategic political discourse offered in the traditional elite-dominated “political spectacle” (Edelman, 1988), in the world of polysemic political entertainment, viewers construct or discover diverse political meanings within a single text. Jason Reitman, director of such acclaimed politically-themed films as Juno and Thank You for Smoking, has observed that both the ideological right and ideological left perceive his films as supporting their own viewpoint. It is the nuanced and complex nature of entertainment that allows for this multitude of interpretations (Moyer-Gusé, 2007). And, it is in these complexities and multitudes that the importance of political entertainment effects rest – albeit with new and complex methodological challenges.

Effects Mechanisms: Areas of Promise

We have firm empirical evidence that a variety of political entertainment messages can produce a wide range of democratic outcomes (see Chapter 21). However, the study of political entertainment effects has been fragmented and lacking in coherent theoretical approaches. A few of the most promising areas of research have, as recommended in earlier sections, integrated systematic analyses of programming content and audiences (or consumers), and have explicated subtle theoretical mechanisms, including interactive effects based on audience characteristics. This kind of approach is thriving in the study of political humor, for instance, as researchers have sought to categorize and quantify the content of political humor, satire, and irony, and develop micro-level information processing mechanisms to account for political effects within and across humor type (Nabi, Moyer-Gusé, & Byrne, 2008).

Another promising area of effects research has approached the study of fiction and narrative. Here, scholars have empirically defined what constitutes “narrative” compared to non-narrative content and have developed the concept of “transportation into a narrative world” to refer to the experience of being absorbed into a given story. Scholars are recognizing that the process of transportation may account for narrative's ability to affect cognitive processing and attitude change (Green & Brock, 2000). This exploration of the unique influence of fictional content has suggested that fiction may be categorized quite differently in the brain, and hence be subject to less scrutiny than non-fictional messages (Wheeler, Green, & Brock, 1999), a conclusion that has profound implications for the study of fictional or narrative style political entertainment from The West Wing to medical and crime dramas, to fictional films about politics or war.

Finally, we turn to the promising work by scholars integrating the seemingly incongruous worlds of emotion and information processing. For decades, the separation of news and entertainment was steeped in the notion that the former was rational and the latter emotional (see Delli Carpini & Williams, 2001). Just as the boundaries between these two genres have eroded, so too have the boundaries between the study of emotion and reason in political communication (Neuman, Marcus, Crigler, & MacKuen, 2007). Indeed, the broader discipline of media effects has produced extensive evidence confirming the usefulness of integrating the study of emotion into information-processing mechanisms of mass communication effects (e.g., Nabi, 1999). According to this research, emotions like fear, guilt, and more recently, anger (Moons & Mackie, 2007) have the ability to inform how viewers categorize and cognitively process media messages. Given the abundance of evidence in this burgeoning field and the intimate relationship between entertainment and emotion (Tannenbaum, 1980), we urge scholars to seek to integrate this emerging theoretical perspective into the systematic study of the content, audiences, and mechanisms responsible for democratic outcomes – across and within political entertainment genres.

Hybridity

Political communication scholars in more humanistic traditions often emphasize the notion that the influence of political information in myriad forms is diverse, omnipresent, complex, and subtle. In spite of this, political media effects scholars to date continue to examine the most overt political outcomes (e.g., voting, favorability of political candidates, political knowledge) and the most overt political forms of entertainment (e.g., The Daily Show, The West Wing, The Colbert Report), but without attention to the subtleties or complexities underlying the phenomenon as a whole. This is not surprising, nor is it particularly worthy of scorn, per se. More often when a new area of study gains traction, as the empirical study of political entertainment has over the last decade, scholars first offer a series of novel or interesting effects and various strands of disparate research agendas. Over time, the body of work created through these disparate approaches comes to reveal trends, themes, and – important to our conversation here – important gaps.

One issue that falls into this latter category – gaps in the research agenda – concerns how political entertainment media relate to more traditional political communication information outlets, like news, in the generation of processes of effects (Holbert et al., 2007). Far too many scholars (including the authors of this chapter on occasion) have adopted a competitive framework in looking at the role of entertainment versus news relative to a host of democratic outcomes (e.g., Prior, 2005): Which increases political knowledge more? Which is more “substantive?” Which encourages more political engagement? This competitive framework has been counterproductive, as it seems to fundamentally misunderstand – and empirically misrepresent – our ever-evolving political media landscape. Instead, we must understand how all forms of political content function in coordination with one another in the production of a range of media effects. As Chaffee (1986) argued long ago, communication breeds more communication. It is here in these complementary dynamics that we will find an accurate representation of how our citizens interact with their political worlds (see Holbert & Benoit, 2009). Such an approach will illuminate the evolutionary dynamics of the variety of political messages in the new media landscape, hence facilitating a broader, more systematic understanding of the role of media in politics.

Indeed, the audience does not interact with entertainment and news as distinct or competing genres. The people who consume political entertainment are the people consuming “traditional” political entertainment (Hmielowski et al., 2011b; Young & Tisinger, 2006). The unique addition of Baum's “gateway hypothesis” (2003) to the body of political entertainment scholarship has shown the advantages of effects models that emphasize the complementary worlds of political entertainment and news. Several studies have confirmed the utility of such a hybrid approach, revealing that political entertainment content can serve as a “gateway,” leading to greater consumption of news content (Baum, 2003; Xenos & Becker, 2009; Chapter 21, this volume). In short, the limited evidence amassed to date points to entertainment and news functioning together in relation to the citizenry.

In spite of these early forays into the hybrid world of political media effects, as a discipline, we have yet to address what this complementary dynamic means for the study of media's political influence. To develop such a framework, effects scholars must first contextualize their orientation to the study of political entertainment effects in the historical, economic, and technological roots of this hybrid phenomenon. Just as a keen understanding of the content and audience of political entertainment has informed the development of important effects mechanisms to date, so too must these larger issues of history, economics, and technology begin to inform the development of effects models across the hybrid media landscape.

Causes and Characteristics of Hybrid Political Media Environment

Much of the conceptual work underlying this discussion comes to us from scholars of culture, who, through observation, case study, and historical analysis, have begun to articulate the characteristics and causes of the emergent hybrid political entertainment landscape. Work by numerous prominent scholars in this area (Baym, 2009; Delli Carpini & Williams, 2001; Gray, Jones, & Thompson, 2009; Jones, 2010), has successfully framed the discussion of political entertainment in terms of the economic, cultural, and technological transformations that lead to the hybrid political entertainment environment we know today. We summarize this discussion to provide effects scholars with the necessary introduction to begin to think more broadly about the very patterns of effects they seek to understand.

The hybrid media environment we find ourselves immersed in today is a sharp contrast from that to which citizens turned even two short decades ago. The obvious difference is the profusion of media options made available in the digital media environment, and the decline in the popularity – and hence power – of the once dominant big three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Yet, as explicated by Delli Carpini and Williams (2001) and Baym (2009), this shift goes far beyond the simple increase in media options experienced by the average citizen. Throughout the bulk of the twentieth century, the dominant perspective of the political world was founded on a strict separation between elites and the masses, and, correspondingly between news and entertainment. This tradition, borne out of social scientific approaches to the study of individual and crowd behavior (LeBon, 1896; Lippmann, 1922) emphasized the need for people to be organized and governed by elites, or “experts,” as Lippmann argued, lest they become victims of whimsy or other dangerous forces, fears that many saw confirmed by the rise of the Nazi party in Germany during the 1930s.

The notion that the masses needed to be protected and instructed also shaped the nature of journalism throughout the century. Journalism became a profession, governed by “institutional structures and processes” (Delli Carpini & Williams, 2001, p. 165) concerning the strict division between opinion and “fact” and between news and entertainment, as well as protective mechanisms designed to limit the influence of money on the production and content of news itself (Schudson, 1998). Throughout television's first decades in the home, scarcity of resources and broadcast spectra, as well as the prohibitive cost to produce and air television content led to the concentration of broadcast power in the hands of just a few large networks. What accompanied this focused concentration of power was a stable hierarchy separating the news producers, on the one hand, from news consumers, on the other. It also facilitated a standardization in news formats and governing principles, including the implicit understanding across the networks that “network newsworkers [. . . were] in the business of public information, a distinct enterprise from the networks' wider profit-seeking strategies” (Baym, 2009, p. 11). Scholars argue that such policies “protected” journalism from the pressures of audience “wants,” leaving news decisions framed instead in terms of audience “needs” (Baym, 2009); hence reifying the news/entertainment distinction on yet another level.

Through a complex and rapid set of concurrent transformations starting in the late 1980s, however, these seemingly fixed guidelines and definitions quickly began to break down. Chief among them were the policies of the media deregulation of the 1980s, which extended into the late 1990s, as well as the simultaneous advances in digital communication technologies including cable and the Internet. Deregulation that began in the 1980s had far-reaching implications for the nature of media industries as a whole (Bagdikian, 1992), leading to increased consolidation of ownership among media conglomerates. With the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the expansion of media monopolies snowballed, the protected class of public affairs programming was rendered obsolete, and news programming that had otherwise been protected from economic pressures found itself squeezed for ratings and revenue (McChesney, 1999). As argued by Delli, Carpini, and Williams (2001), this process of increased centralization of ownership “into a handful of international communications conglomerates with interests in film, music, cable, and broadcast television increases the pressure for profit and further blurs the line between news and entertainment” (p. 166).

This blurring of lines between news and entertainment and between what people need and what people want was simultaneously nourished by technological advances in cable and digital technologies. With a proliferation of channels and modes of access not bounded by time or space, media conglomerates began to acquire holdings across genres and platforms. Meanwhile, because digital media are decentralized by design, it soon became clear that their power and influence would be difficult to harness, hence mitigating the impact of the once-powerful mass media gatekeepers (see Baym, 2009). The migration of control over political information away from political elites increasingly challenged their already waning political authority (Delli Carpini & Williams, 2001) and began to allow for other voices and genres to emerge as popular and legitimate sources of political information and understanding (Jones, 2010).

We argue that it is imperative that political entertainment effects scholars understand this historical perspective and allow it to inform their work. The existence of the political entertainment genre that we study today is inherently tied to the “post-network era” because the very transformations (in policy and technologies) that eroded the networks' centralized authority, gave rise to the hybrid political entertainment landscape in the first place. As a result, an important synergy exists between declining network or journalistic authority on the one hand, and the rising authority of alternative voices and genres on the other. These concurrent shifts have invited – even encouraged – citizens to construct political meaning through multiple (if not infinite) channels, a phenomenon that was richly documented in the work of Delli Carpini and Williams dating back to 1994. Fortunately, there is increasing acknowledgment among scholars, journalists, and elites, that people are actively constructing meaning from these varied sources. At the same time, at least among cultural scholars, there is a salient recognition that none of these programs or genres exist in isolation from the others (see Gray, Jones, & Thompson, 2010).

And so, we return to our aforementioned call for effects scholars to take into account the complementary relationship between mass-mediated political texts. We do so, however, not simply because individuals are consuming various forms of political information (Hmielowski et al., 2011b; Young & Tisinger, 2006), but because political content across the spectrum of mediated political information is by and large symbiotic. News programs adopt entertainment norms to meet growing demands for profit (Hickey, 1998) and increasingly report on political entertainment programming and its effects as news (Feldman, 2007). Meanwhile, overtly political entertainment programs (like The Daily Show or Real Time with Bill Maher) make explicit use of political “news” both in the coverage of political events and in the deconstruction of norms governing politics and news (Baym, 2003; Jones, 2010; Young, 2007). In addition, entertainment programming at large incorporates political topics, events, narratives, and themes (Van Zoonen, 2005). Jones (2010) and Van Zoonen (2005) are among the growing number of scholars who highlight how such entertainment engages subtle political themes in a manner consistent with how ordinary citizens think about politics. By tapping into political themes through anecdote, emotion, humor, and narrative, such programming may “enable a closure of the estrangement between politics and citizens” (Van Zoonen, 2005, p. 7).

Increasingly, scholars are suggesting that the integration of politics into entertainment programming is far from accidental. Such hybridity in content may be a response to the traditionally symbiotic relationship between the press and politicians (Young, 2007) or to the traditionally elite-dominated political culture of the past (Van Zoonen, 2005). Indeed, Edelman's (1988) Constructing the Political Spectacle suggests art – and perhaps by extension, entertainment – can serve as a counterdiscourse, or remedy, to the political theater that dominates mainstream political culture. Outside of the political world dominated by elites, entertainment might allow more people into the world of political meaning and understanding. By reframing politics into an accessible language of anecdote and emotion, political entertainment might help further shift ownership of “political meanings” away from elites to citizens (see Jones, 2010; Van Zoonen, 2005).

Conclusion: A Bright Future for Effects Research

From an empirical standpoint, the question is “Why do these observations matter?” and “What do we do with them?” Unfortunately, for quantitative media-effects scholars working in the domain of political entertainment, these observations complicate traditional effects models that dominate our work to date. However, rather than embracing a new paradigm of “minimal effects” (e.g., Bennett & Iyengar, 2008, 2010), we believe these observations open a door to a multitude of rich and fruitful areas of effects mechanisms to pursue.

Consider, for example, the empirical implications of the following observations of critical-cultural scholars: Jones et al. (2010) state, “Texts do not take on meaning for any reader in a vacuum. Rather, a reader will always make sense of texts relative to other texts, ‘socially’ or ‘intertextually.’” (p. 18). The concept of “intertextuality” speaks of the need to understand how engagement of politically-oriented entertainment content functions alongside the various types of more news-oriented messages audience members are consuming. The Daily Show does not function in a vacuum relative to news. In fact, The Daily Show only exists because of the news (Baym, 2005). In addition, we know that those who are engaging with The Daily Show are knowledgeable about politics and consume various forms of traditional news material. In terms of how readers make sense of texts “socially,” it is clear that a wide range of social events (e.g., war, economic distress, electioneering) serve to shape how we react to entertainment content with political themes. In fact, even what we deem to be “political” changes as a function of social, cultural, and temporal context. How we come to define any one message as “political” or “nonpolitical” is determined in large part by macro-level factors and the individual's perceptions of and experience with those factors – both of which are inherently shaped by social influences. And so, we see that understanding these social and intertextual processes of media effects is essential to capturing the complex reality of effects in the hybrid media environment. This is rich ground from which to generate multiple lines of media effects research, much of which will require scholars to work across several levels of analysis.

Also speaking of the social and intertextual nature of the new media experience, Jenkins (2006) stresses that, “Convergence represents a cultural shift as consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content . . . Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interactions with others.” (p. 3–4). The notion that people make connections between “dispersed media content” is essential. In this new media environment, a young voter in the 2008 election who is in search of political meaning and understanding will almost certainly craft links between dispersed media content as varied as: Obama's now historic March 18, 2008 speech on race given in Philadelphia, The Simpsons episode in which one of Homer's best friends, a character of African-American descent, becomes his boss, user-generated content on YouTube that expresses individual reactions to the Obama speech, or a documentary film by Neo-Nazis promoting White supremacy. It is the meaning constructed at the crossroads of these pieces of content (and influenced by the preexisting mental models brought to the various media experiences) that will influence how this person will come to think about multiple-attitude objects, ranging from race relations in the United States, to the president, to the prospect of having an African American chief executive. Ultimately each of these perceptions informs this person's political behaviors as well as other attitudes that extend far beyond the immediate issues at hand.

Jenkins' (2006) and Jones' (2010) emphasis on the social nature of new media experiences will become even more relevant as our digital media environment continues to evolve (and with it the nature of our political messages). In the era of blogs, Facebook, and email, citizens no longer consume a newspaper article, magazine exposé, talk radio show, or hour-long television drama in relative isolation. Our consumption of media (no matter what form) is – and will increasingly become – a social act. As Plato stated long ago, we are political beings because we are social beings. Our media have become more social, and, by default, have also become more political. The complexity of connections we, as political and social beings, make will increasingly determine the makeup and feel of our own political identities.

Such observations explicitly denounce the notion that the influence of political entertainment can be found in individual messages alone. If “texts do not take on meaning in a vacuum,” then we seem to face the daunting task of assessing the impact of the landscape as a whole. Yet, when explicated in concrete operational terms, this seemingly impossible task of assessing media impact in light of intertextuality, becomes a thoughtful and manageable exercise – one that will likely lead scholars to some novel and profound avenues of research. The methodological challenge for media effects scholars is clear: Running experiments or conducting surveys at this social and intertextual crossroads is a messy business. Nevertheless, we must continue to challenge ourselves to conduct our research where it will generate the greatest utility and insights. To date, the study of entertainment media and politics has excelled at picking the lowest hanging fruit, but it's time to get out the ladder and begin to seek out that fruit which is most ripe.

We would like to stress that the insights offered by our critical-cultural peers need not be seen as orthogonal to basic social scientific theory. Take for example the advice offered by Jones (2010): Scholars ought to, “. . . be aware of the multivocality of media texts, as well as attempt to understand the complex readings and relations that audiences make and have with television, including their abilities to negotiate, appropriate, employ, and appreciate many different types of programming forms that include politics” (p. 15). Consider this observation in light of the tenets of one of our most basic theories of persuasion, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). Petty and Cacioppo's theory (1986) emphasizes the importance of the cognitive activity of the message recipient, stressing how a message's persuasive power functions in large part due to the motivation and ability levels of the message recipient (or deconstructor). Jones' observation urges scholars to consider the myriad of motivations and abilities audiences bring to the political entertainment media experience. Here, he is suggesting that these individual motivations and abilities shape how message consumers deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning within political content. In the language of media effects scholars, Jones is referring to the process of elaboration. Elaboration as defined by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) is the activity of generating cognitive responses in response to a given message. However, elaboration involves extending one's cognitive activity beyond what is offered in the message alone, instead seeking to connect this new information with preexisting sociological, psychological, and contextual mental frameworks. The meaning that ultimately results from this process often extends far beyond the original message as encoded by its producer and sender. Our point here is to highlight how the integration of more critical-cultural work into our empirical effects-based traditions does not mean abandoning existing theory. In fact, we will most likely find our existing theories to be rendered richer and more meaningful as we explore these links across our epistemological traditions (Hmielowski et al. 2011a).

What we propose is an integrated approach to political entertainment effects that incorporates the tenets of extant research on media-to-media relationships (Holbert & Benoit, 2009), better utilizes existing insights from critical-cultural scholarship, exhibits an awareness of historical, economic, and technological context, and employs an integration of existing cognitive and social psychological theory. In so doing, we seek to capture and reflect the context surrounding the media experience, as well as individuals' perceptions of the complex media environment. In essence, this broad model would:

1 Understand and acknowledge the rich historical, economic, and technological context underlying today's hybrid political entertainment landscape.

2 Consider the social and intertextual realities of the new media experience.

3 Use these frameworks to inform the development of effects mechanisms rooted in cognitive and social psychology.

4 Integrate the role of multiple messages (intertextuality) in the effects process (either directly through measurements of exposure or indirectly through measurements of audience perception, or content hybridization).

5 Emphasize the audience experience as one of active meaning construction.

6 Incorporate detailed studies of audience (characteristics and motivations) and content in this broader contextualized approach.

7 Deduce an appropriate cognitive and social-psychological mechanism to explicate the operative processes and their hypothesized effects.

Such an ambitious agenda cannot be undertaken by a small group of scholars with disparate message-focused research projects. What is required is a healthy marketplace of ideas shaped by a critical mass of scholars who are willing to work across epistemological boundaries. Once more, this work should not be undertaken solely within the United States or in Western democracies. Such a research agenda should take on a global perspective as broad issues being raised in this chapter are not bound by place or time (e.g., Tsfati, Tukachinsky, & Peri, 2009). This kind of collaboration is particularly difficult given that such research is being conducted across a multitude of disciplines and using a variety of methods and terminologies. However, we hope that through the publication of this chapter in such a comprehensive text, we can help to develop new and improved lines of communication. Through the integration of ideas across discipline and method, we see a bright future for scholarship in the area of politics and entertainment. The challenges are great, but so too is the potential for profound developments in our understanding of citizens' interactions with their political worlds.

NOTE

1 The authorship order is alphabetical – author contributed equally to the chapter. The authors would like to thank Jayeon Lee (MA, University of Texas at Austin), doctoral student in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University, for her article collection efforts. We would also like to thank Mao Vang and Stefanie Best for their efforts during the final editing stages.

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