Satirizing the Clothing Industry on <i>YouTube</i> : How Political Satire and User Comments Jointly Shape Behavioral Intentions

Abstract

Recently, scholars have started to investigate how the valence of user comments presented alongside online videos influences viewers’ experiences of and responses to those videos. The present experiment adds to this literature by investigating the role of user comments that accompany an online political satire video in particular. Moreover, it advances our knowledge of the effect of comments by investigating firstly how user comments shape viewers’ experiences of political satire and, secondly, how these experiences subsequently influence viewers’ behavioral intentions. The results show that the valence of comments influences viewers’ behavioral intentions and that this effect is mediated by viewers’ subjective knowledge gain and their eudaimonic entertainment experiences in response to the political satire video. Although the valence of comments also affects political satire viewers’ hedonic entertainment experiences, these specific entertainment experiences do not impact viewers’ behavioral intentions. These results show that comments do not only shape viewers’ experiences as they are watching political satire online, but they also have consequences for what viewers intent to do offline.