The Affective Effect of Late-Night Humor: The Indirect Influence of Late-Night Comedy Consumption on Political Engagement through Emotions

Abstract

The research in this dissertation explores the complex communication processes whereby late-night comedy viewing can produce significant indirect effects on citizen engagement in political life. To this end, the present study introduces a theoretical framework, which synthesizes Affective Intelligence theory, the Orientation-Stimulus-Orientation-Response (O-S-O-R) approach, and the Communication Mediation Model. Specifically, three indirect effects models are proposed and tested across two different research designs: an online experiment and a mail survey. The main findings include the following. First, late-night comedy viewing can promote citizens’ political engagement indirectly by eliciting their anger and worry. Second, consuming satirical humor can mobilize discursive activities for citizens by provoking their negative emotions. Third, more frequent discussion, the expanded size of a discussion network, and greater engagement in online communication activities can mediate and reinforce the mobilizing effects of late-night comedy viewing. Finally, the mediating effects of negative emotions and heterogeneous discussion are conditional upon education, such that exposure to late-night comedy can encourage political participation of well-educated individuals, while the same experiences from satirical humor can demobilize less savvy counterparts. The current research effort provides a range of insights to explore the role of newly emerging media genres that are presumably of less enlightening value and yet are more emotionally amusing and provocative. Primarily, these findings contribute to our understanding of various mediation models anchored in the O-S-O-R framework. By incorporating emotion as a viable mediator (the second O) between the reception of message (S) and its ensuing response (R), the proposed indirect effects models enlarge the scope of the mediation model, while capturing the dynamic intervening mechanisms above and beyond more conventional cognitive accounts. Further by introducing education as a first O, the current research fully exploits the O-S-O-R framework in assessing the impact of political entertainment. Moreover, investigating multiple facets of interpersonal discussion harboring distinct implications for participatory democracy extends the purview of mediators that might be employed in the Communication Mediation Model.