This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.
I wonder what Colbert thinks about the study.
Also, I wonder what conservatives thought of Colbert's speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. You should seriously watch it. It's painfully funny, made even funnier by the fact the butt of the jokes (W and many of the people in the room) don't find it funny. The Wikipedia article has a nice summary if you don't want to watch the whole video.
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