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Weekly UpdatesSatire requires a unique connection to be formed between the satirist and the audience member. As Knight (2004) remarked, "the addressee and the addresser must agree that the author's imaginative attack and the reader's actual condemnation are justified by the values articulated or implied by the satire" (p. 41). The satirical message offered by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show is that national television news is fraudulent; journalists are acting more like guard dogs than watchdogs of the public and private power elite (see Olien, Donohue, & Tichenor, 1995, for guard dog vs. watchdog argument). National television news in particular has become an outlet where the two major political parties can present their particular framing of issues, whereas these programs used to be places for "journalism-as-public inquiry" (Baym, 2005, p. 259). This message about journalism would be particularly well received by those individuals who already feel somewhat disenfranchised by the political system, those low in internal political self-efficacy. In other words, the implicit agreement concerning the moral justification of Stewart's satirical commentary is strongest among those low in internal political self-efficacy, and this deeper connection to the satirical elements of the show should lead to a stronger primacy effect for The Daily Show among those low in internal political self-efficacy. Thus, the following hypothesis is offered:
H2a: Internal political self-efficacy serves as a moderator in the relation between the experimental stimulus condition and the political gratifications associated with national TV news in that the primacy effect for The Daily Show [right arrow] national television news condition is more pronounced among those participants who are low in internal political self-efficacy.
Applying the same basic argument to national television news, a pronounced primacy effect for national television news on the political gratifications associated with The Daily Show would be expected among those who are high in internal political self-efficacy. Those individuals who perceive themselves to be more politically competent and to have a meaningful say in how political decisions are made are more likely to cling to the idea that national television journalism can aid them in better understanding the political system and how to be more effective when they engage in political activities. Thus, the following hypothesis is posited:
H2b: Internal political self-efficacy serves as a moderator in the relation between the experimental stimulus condition and political gratifications associated with The Daily Show in that the primacy effect for the national television news [right arrow] The Daily Show condition is more pronounced among those who are high in internal political self-efficacy.
Method
Participants
This study involved undergraduate students enrolled in various introductory courses offered by the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware (N = 201). The mean age for the participant pool was 20.07. All participants were of legal voting age. The mean for a combined two-item (economic and social) 7-point political ideology scale reveals a participant pool balanced around the midpoint (M = 3.5, SD = 1.2; [alpha] = .81). Roughly half of the young voters (48%) stated they were members of a political party, and the partisans were nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
Procedures
The study was conducted over the course of 3 weeks in late March and early April 2004. Participants were informed that they would be taking part in a study dealing with personal perceptions of television public affairs content, with their first task being to complete a pretest questionnaire 1 week prior to coming into contact with experimental media stimuli. The pretest questionnaire asked participants to provide basic demographic information, to provide responses to a battery of internal political self-efficacy items, and to specify their existing public affairs television viewing habits. The participants were placed into one of three experimental conditions: The Daily Show [right arrow] Traditional TV News, Traditional TV News [right arrow] The Daily Show, and control (i.e., no stimulus). Participants were then e-mailed with the date, time, and location for where they could complete the second and final phase of the study.
Participants were asked to attend one of eight session times over the course of 2 weeks (March 29, 2004-April 1, 2004, or April 5, 2004-April 8, 2004). The first week's sessions had participants show up just prior to the live evening viewing (11:00 p.m. EST) of The Daily Show. Participants in these sessions first viewed The Daily Show and then watched a subsequent real-time half-hour of CNN Headline News. CNN Headline News was chosen as an example of national television news relative to the participants for this study for several reasons: (a) A majority of the participants stated in the pretest questionnaire that either CNN Headline News was their primary traditional TV news source or all traditional TV news sources were about the same (50.8%); (1) (b) CNN Headlines News has redesigned its format multiple times in recent years in an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic, achieving some success through these endeavors (Romano, 2002); and (c) CNN Headline News afforded the opportunity to provide a live TV viewing experience in the time surrounding the live airing of The Daily Show. The participants were asked in the second week's sessions to first watch a real-time half-hour of CNN Headline News (10:30-11:00 p.m. EST) and then the live viewing of that night's episode of The Daily Show. On completion of the stimulus phase, each participant filled out a posttest questionnaire. The posttest phase inquired separately as to the political gratifications associated with national television news viewing and The Daily Show viewing. The gratifications measures for the respective forms of television viewing were randomly ordered to reduce response biases. Prior to each stimulus session a predetermined number of control participants were escorted to a separate room where they simply completed the posttest questionnaire without coming into contact with any television stimuli.
Design
A 3 (The Daily Show--National TV news vs. National TV news--The Daily Show vs. control) x 2 (low vs. high internal political self-efficacy) between-subject experimental design was used to address this study's hypotheses. A mean split was used to break the internal political self-efficacy variable into the high and low groups. A relatively equal number of participants in the three stimulus conditions completed all phases of the experiment: The Daily Show as first viewing (n = 68), CNN as first viewing (n = 70), and control (n = 63).
Measures
Independent Variable. Internal political self-efficacy is a three-item additive index consisting of participant responses to the following three statements: (a) Whether I vote or not has no influence on what politicians do; (b) People like me don't have any say about what the government does; and (c) Sometimes government and politics seem so complicated that a person like me can't really understand what is going on. The first two items concern the observable dimension of perceived effectiveness, and the third item measures perceived competence. Participants were asked to rate their level of agreement for each statement on 5-point scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Responses were recoded to reflect strong internal political self-efficacy being coded high. This three-item index was created in part to deal with criticisms concerning the use of just the last of the three items as a measure of internal political self-efficacy (Neimi et al., 1991 ; see also Morrell, 2003). The three-item index proved reliable (M = 3.66, SD = 0.78, [alpha] = .70).
Dependent Variables. Reduced four-item political media gratifications scales were used to create separate dependent variables for national television news viewing and The Daily Show viewing (Perse, 1994). (2) Participants were presented with the following directive: "Here is a list of statements that different people have made when asked why they watch national television news shows that feature political candidates. For each statement on the list, please rate on a 7-point scale how pertinent each statement is to why you turn to television news shows that feature political candidates. A 1 on this scale reflects a response of not at all pertinent and a 7 reflects a response of extremely pertinent." The same statement was then provided for The Daily Show political gratifications items, but with "national television news shows that feature political candidates" from the first sentence of the directive being replaced with "entertainment television shows that feature political candidates (e.g., The Daily Show)," and "television news shows that feature political candidates" from the second sentence of the directive being replaced with "entertainment television shows that feature political candidates." The following set of four statements were provided to each participant, one relative to national television news consumption and another relative to The Daily Show: To judge what political leaders are like; To see what a candidate would do if elected; To keep up with the main issues of the day; and To help make up my mind how to vote in an election. The two, four-item dependent variable indexes were found to be reliable: national television news (M = 5.1, SD = 1.0, [alpha] = .73) and The Daily Show (M = 3.6, SD = 1.3, [alpha] = .85). A paired-sample t test revealed a strong mean difference for The Daily Show and national TV news scales (t = -15.13, p < .001).
Covariates. Existing viewing habits for both national television news and The Daily Show were included as covariates to account for previous use of both outlets. Both TV viewing variables are additive indexes consisting of exposure and attention measures (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986). National television news use is a three-item index, whereas The Daily Show is a two-item additive index. Participants were provided with the following statement relative to exposure to "national cable television news" and "national broadcast network news": "On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 = rarely and 7 = all the time how often do you watch the following types of television news programs? You also have the option of circling 0 = never if you never watch a particular program type." The following statement was then offered concerning attention to national television news in general: "Regardless of how often you come across stories about national government and politics when watching any form of television news, how much attention do you pay to these types of stories when you do come into contact with them? The scale ranges from 1 = little attention to 7 = very close attention, and you have the option of circling 0 = no attention." The same respective statements were provided for a single The Daily Show exposure item and a single The Daily Show attention item. Both indexes are reliable: National TV news viewing (M = 3.5, SD = 1.5, [alpha] = .79); The Daily Show (M = 3.6, SD = 1.6, r = .50). (3)
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