Amarnath Amarasingam

Hit and miss series of essays. While some contain new details and information about the impacts of satirical political TV, others have pretty serious methodological flaws or factual inaccuracies. As a social scientist, I found some of the obvious methodological issues to be highly disconcerting, especially when it came to limitations on generalizability. One paper in particular claims to be highly generalizable to the entire population of The Daily Show viewers, but uses a very specific population, college students. While college students may make up a substantial proportion of the show's viewers, by no means do residential college students represent TV viewers or voters in terms of racial makeup, socioeconomic status, employment, etc. That's a pretty key generalizability limitation that the paper utterly ignored.

Stuff like this should have been caught and addressed by the editor. However, since this volume reflects an uneasy tension between accessibility to the layman and academic structure, I think things like this fell through the cracks.

Worth a read if you're interested in the topic, but people with a social science background shouldn't expect professional-level work.… (more)

The continued popularity and cultural relevance of The Daily Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report is a source of bemusement to some and concern to others. In some ways, both shows have enjoyed surprising longevity for comedy programs. Some people are concerned, though, by the impact of the cynical humor on political participation, particularly on a generation where many, according to anecdotal evidence, get their news mostly from these two faux newscasts on Comedy Central.

Scholars have taken notice of this conventional wisdom and are beginning to study the two programs' impacts on politics and journalism. Several recent examinations are collected in "The Stewart/Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impacts of Fake News." After an overview of previous scholarship, there are ten essays attempting to judge the influence of these programs on such matters as partisanship, civic discourse, television journalism.

The ten essays are evenly split between, first, social science examinations and, then, theoretical considerations. Unfortunately, this creates a book with very different halves, and many readers will probably favor one half over the other, depending on their preferred approach to such matters. In general, I appreciated the more theoretical essays, in part because I found some of the social science articles a bit repetitive (though, admittedly, that is a risk when essays from different contributors are assembled in a volume such as this).

That said, the most important piece in the book is likely the first one, which considers the amount of airtime given to scientific issues on both television programs. The contributors, Lauren Feldman, Anthony Leiserowitz, and Edward Maibach, offer data that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report devote more attention than other television news organizations and suggest that they use their comedy as a hook to provide serious education on such issues as technology, the environment, and global warming.

The theoretical articles each seek to deconstruct the approaches of the two fake news shows, and are generally to be applauded for making that less arduous reading than it might be -- after all, what is fun about trying to explain how a joke works? Among these, though, the best is an exploration of the interview styles of both Stewart and Colbert, which highlights the opportunity that Colbert's character performance allows him to ask questions other television interviewers cannot ask, leading frequently to more free-flowing conversations than seen in most promotional interviews for book or movie releases. (I quibble only that the author does not credit the influence of David Letterman in this practice.)

In sum, the solid academic articles will interest those looking for a scholarly considerations of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but will be a disappointment to more casual fans hoping for light-hearted approaches, which are almost non-existent in these very serious essays.… (more)

After reading the Foreword, Preface and Introduction of this Early Reviewer selection I was tempted to forego the remainder of the book. Its style was rather academic and dry making it difficult to focus on the subject at hand. Fortunately, I endured and began reading the essays/studies, all pertaining to politics as comedy and the possible benefits of satire, as seen on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and Steve Colbert's The Colbert Report, in educating viewers. The most rewarding portion of each essay is the "Discussion" section where all the scientific Tables, Tests and Graphs are broken down into laymen's terms. Using the 2008 presidential campaign the studies demonstrate how hero's and villain's are created and marketed and through satire the layers of what is called real news is peeled back "to reveal, with silliness, the silliness of the supposedly important issue". After reading these essay's I'll be looking at the 2012 presidential campaign with learned eyes.
Would I recommend........................Hardly, if this book were as entertaining as the shows it is studying it would certainly be more mainstream and easier to read, still I'm glad it fell into my hands.… (more)