Tuning in to the personal: late-night comedy, message engagement, and the gun control debate

Abstract

ABSTRACT The research (N = 265) considers the effect of exposure to personalized political comedy on the gun control debate on message discounting, perceived informativeness, and message elaboration. Results show that viewers are less likely to engage in message discounting, more likely to engage in message elaboration, and more likely to rate personalized political comedy as informative when compared against exposure to a standard late-night monologue. Importantly, the findings show that personalized political comedy content has greater message engagement effects among those with lower affinity for entertaining news, suggesting that personalized political comedy may help to expand issue engagement and audiences.