“It’s the first study actually showing that Colbert is doing a better job than other news sources at teaching people about campaign financing,” said Bruce W. Hardy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a senior researcher at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania. “Consistently, we found that Colbert did better than every other news source we included in our model.”
The study, published online in Mass Communication and Society, tested “The Colbert Report” against CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and broadcast nightly news, as well as talk radio and newspapers as sources of political information. The study, “Stephen Colbert’s Civics Lesson,” was based on phone survey data from 1,232 adults 18 years or older who were interviewed between Dec. 13, 2012 and Dec. 23, 2012.
Watching “The Colbert Report” served as “an extended civics lesson,” the researchers said. The show not only increased people’s perceptions that they knew more about political financing, but significantly increased their actual knowledge, and did so at a greater rate than other news sources. Other activities that also increased knowledge about super PACs and 501(c)(4)s, but to a lesser degree, included reading a daily newspaper, listening to talk radio, and watching Fox News.
“Colbert did better than any other news source at teaching,” Hardy said. “There were two reasons. First was the narrative structure. He walked us through creating a super PAC and every episode was a continuation of that story. And second was the use of humor and satire.”
The researchers said that the use of a continuing narrative in which the humorist crossed from being an observer to an active participant engaged viewers more than the traditional approach used by the news media. The “inverted pyramid” used in many news stories, in which the most important news comes first, has been compared with “being told the punchline before the joke,” the study noted.
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