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Weekly UpdatesThe rise of The Daily Show has brought a series of empirical questions concerning its influence on basic democratic processes. One type of knowledge can be obtained from better understanding the unique effects of this program on the U.S. electorate when compared to more traditional political communication outlets (e.g., political advertising, debates). Research of this kind typically introduces a number of political information outlets and assesses the relative predictive value of one outlet versus another for a host of dependent variables (e.g., Brians & Wattenberg, 1996; Holbert, Benoit, Hansen, & Wen, 2002; Weaver & Drew, 2001). This approach to political communication effects provides important empirical insights, but there is little effort made to understand how the information outlets relate to one another in producing a set of outcomes.
Holbert (2005a) argued that political communication scholarship should not simply look past analyses of relations among various political media stimuli. Instead, there is a real need to better understand how the consumption of one type of media stimulus can influence the perceptions or use of another media stimulus. This argument is particularly relevant to the study of emerging forms of entertainment-based political information and more traditional forms of public affairs media consumption. For example, Young and Tisinger (2006) argued for and found empirical evidence to support the claim that late-night comedy viewing for political information purposes is not supplanting the use of more traditional forms of television news viewing. Instead, the two forms of media use complement one another in aiding citizens to better understand the major issues of the day. Of particular interest to this study is whether viewing The DailyShow, which presents a critical view of U.S. journalism, influences people's perceptions of the political gratifications associated with national television news viewing. Thus, this study seeks to assess stimulus-to-stimulus relations that can shed light on how various types of political information outlets function in coordination with one another as citizens work their way through today's complex media environment.
The study of political media gratifications has been a part of political communication research for several decades (see Perse, 1994, for a brief summary). Palmgreen, Wenner, and Rayburn (1980) pointed out that the "study of the uses and gratifications of television news programs has its origins in Lasswell's (1948) conceptualization of the functions of communication" (p. 167). Specific measures of political media gratifications were first used to better understand why people tune in to watch political television broadcasts (e.g., Blumler & McQuail, 1969), and similar measures have also been employed in McLeod and Becker's (1974) transactional model of media influence in an effort to link motivations for political media consumption to tangible media effects. McLeod and Becker found political media gratifications for TV news to serve as statistically significant and unique predictors (beyond the predictive value of TV news exposure) of vote likelihood, political participation, and exposure to political advertising. McLeod, Becker, and Byrnes (1974) also found that the political media gratifications can serve as a hedge against certain types of media effects (e.g., agenda setting).
Overall, political media gratifications have been linked to the study of (a) why people consume political media, (b) how individual-level media orientations function alongside actual political media use, and (c) important conditional media effects on a wide range of dependent variables deemed important to basic democratic processes. In short, the study of political media gratifications is central to the core aspects of political communication research. Variations of the original political gratifications measures have been employed to assess why people engage a variety of political information outlets, beyond just TV news (e.g., political rallies [Sanders & Kaid, 1981], newspaper reading [Becker, 1979]). However, political gratifications measures have never been used for entertainment-based political media like The Daily Show.
McLeod and Becker (1981) described three distinct methodological approaches to the study of media uses and gratifications. The first and most commonly used method is the survey-based technique of self-report gratifications-sought measures and associating these items with actual media consumption or the indirect effects of gratifications sought on a given set of post-media-use outcome variables (Rubin, 2002). A second technique is also survey-based and uses more traditional survey items (i.e., demographic, psychographic, and contextual variables) as indirect or surrogate measures of motives for media use and then analyzing the relations between these variables, different types of media use, and the effects associated with mass communication consumption (e.g., Shah, 1998). The final and least used technique involves experimentation. More specifically, researchers can study how the manipulation of media stimuli or the conditions under which media stimuli are consumed alters media gratifications.
This study employs the latter experimental approach. The study seeks to assess whether the consumption of The Daily Show influences the political gratifications associated with national television news viewing, and vice versa. There are a number of ways to create media stimuli manipulations to achieve this goal. However, it was essential to this study to not treat The Daily Show and national television news viewing in relative isolation. As a result, it was necessary for those participants in a stimulus condition to receive both types of political media stimuli. Once multiple stimuli become imperative, there is a natural questioning of whether varied patterns of consumption will make a difference. In short, the study of message order effects can serve as a foundation from which to begin a broader empirical assessment of how the combined consumption of The Daily Show and national television news influences the political gratifications associated with the viewing of the respective stimuli.
The Primacy Effect
The study of message order effects has been a mainstay of persuasion research since the inception of the discipline (e.g., Knower, 1936). A significant amount of time and attention has been spent trying to better understand what Lund (1925) first identified as the dominance of the first persuasive message when two competing messages are provided to an individual one immediately after the other (e.g., Hovland, 1951 ; Hovland & Mandel, 1957). Much of this research has found the primacy effect to exist across a variety of contexts (Lana, 1961 ; Luchins, 1957), but there were only sporadic theoretical discussions as to why this should be the case (McGuire, 1966). Lund (1925) suggested that audience members view the second of two competing messages in a more critical light. Hovland (1951) argued that the primacy effect may be due in some part to audience members engaging in proactive inhibition. Anderson (1965) noted that participants may simply pay less attention to the latter message, resulting in less potential influence. Finally, Insko (1967) provided a detailed argument that contact with the first message can alter the very nature of the meaning of the second, resulting in the latter message being purely reactionary relative to the first message. In short, there is relatively consistent support that primacy effects do exist under several different conditions, but the theoretical discussions concerning these empirical findings have been scattered.
It is not the underlying motivation of this study to test competing theoretical claims concerning why primacy effects persist. Instead, the primacy effect is used as a starting point by which to explore the more general empirical question of whether viewing The Daily Show can influence viewers' perceptions of the political gratifications associated with national television news, and vice versa. Given that The Daily Show is a satirical presentation of journalism as a profession, it is argued that those participants who view The Daily Show prior to national television news will retain weaker political gratifications associated with national television news relative to those individuals who view national television news prior to The Daily Show. Similarly, participants who view national television news prior to The Daily Show will retain weaker political gratifications associated with The Daily Show relative to those people who view The Daily Show prior to national television news. Thus, the following two hypotheses are posited:
H1a: Political gratifications associated with national TV news viewing are weakest among those participants who consume The Daily Show just prior to national television news.
H1b: Political gratifications associated with The Daily Show viewing are weakest among those participants who consume national television news just prior to The Daily Show.
Internal Political Self-Efficacy as Moderator
The pair of primacy effects just posited offer a first step for studying how the combined consumption of The Daily Show and national television news affects audience members' perceptions of the respective outlets. However, recent work on the primacy effect by Haugtvedt and Wegener (1994) has reemphasized the need to explore the conditional nature of this type of persuasive effect relative to individual differences. The individual-difference variable focused on in this study is internal political self-efficacy (Craig, Niemi, & Silver, 1990). Niemi, Craig, and Mattel (1991) defined internal political self-efficacy as "beliefs about one's own competence to understand, and to participate effectively in, politics" (p. 1407). Internal political self-efficacy is a latent variable that is comprised of two observable dimensions, perceived competence and perceived effectiveness. The competence dimension concerns whether citizens believe they have the ability to understand the major political issues of the day, and the latter dimension focuses on whether voters feel their actions matter in terms of how political decisions are made. There is the potential for the main primacy effects generated by varied consumption patterns of The Daily Show and national television news to differ across those high versus low in internal political self-efficacy.
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