Priming Effects of Late-Night Comedy

Abstract

Having become fully integrated into the contemporary political landscape, infotainmentoriented media extend Americans’ traditional news (e.g. newspaper, radio, and television) to include a greater number of sources for political information, and in some cases, political mobilization. Given the increasing prominence of infotainment-oriented media in contemporary politics, this study addresses the effects of one particular type of infotainment—late-night comedy—during the 2000 presidential campaign. Specifically, we are interested in whether watching late-night comedy shows influences viewers’ evaluations of the candidates who have appeared on these shows; in particular, we investigate priming as the mechanism by which such influences occur. Findings from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey (N = 11,482) indicate that evaluations of candidates are based in part on respondents’ sociodemographics, perceptions of candidates to handle certain issues, and their character traits. There was a main effect of watching latenight comedy on evaluations of candidates; more importantly, viewers were more likely than nonviewers to base their evaluations of George W. Bush on character traits after he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. A large corpus of political communication scholarship grounded in the election