Reading these boards, I came accross the theory that negative ads work by convincing moderates to not vote, by advancing the idea that all politicians are liars/crooks/etc. While watching the Daily Show the other day, I noticed that by continously pointing out the ridiculous, and dishonest activities of politicians, the Daily Show unintentionally advances the same idea.
I know the Daily Show doesn’t have a large enough audience to really affect national elections, and that most Daily Show viewers are College students who are unlikely to vote anyway, but do you think it is possible that a Daily Show watcher is less likely to vote than they would if they didn’t watch the Daily Show?
Less likely to vote for an incumbent, maybe.
I would expect that it encourages voting because it is a popular show that engages the viewers in the political process.
Most local and national TV news shows have at most a few minutes on which candidates are ahead or behind in the polls, and maybe the scandal of the day. The Daily Show actually focuses on issues, if in a humorous way. It also has very interesting interviews with politicians, authors and commentators.
I would strongly suspect that a regular Daily Show view is much more likely to vote than the average American.
If the truth discourages people from voting, it’s not the Daily Show’s fault. It seems to me that this idea implies that the media shouldn’t point out when politicians are liars and hypocrites.
No. You’re not taking into account who the typical Daily Show viewer is: a person who is more interested and knowledgable about politics than the average person in the same age group. Somebody who isn’t interested in politics, and is therefore unlikely to vote, probably doesn’t watch the show. I bet that viewers are more likely to vote, not less, and I’d say it’s unlikely that a comedy show would make them decide not to vote.
Possibly, if it was set up as a “They’re all idiots, why bother?” type show. But it’s not… it’s more like “They’re all idiots, so when you find a good person, VOTE FOR THEM! GET RID OF THE IDIOTS!”.
Besides, the Daily Show doesn’t just lampoon politicians; it also makes fun of journalists to a large degree.
The original premise of the OP is wrong - namely negative ads actually [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701474.html}don’t decrease voter turnout.
Well, if negative ads don’t reduce turnout, then this theory is shot.
I would like to point out to Marley23 that I wasn’t making a value judgement, just an observation, and was curious about the accuracy of my extrapolating from the observation.
Also, to both Billdo and Marley23: Comparing the voting habits of a Daily Show viewer against the voting habits of the American public is not a valid argument against what I was proposing. Those politically minded choose to watch the Daily Show, and so Daily Show viewers are more likely to vote, but that could just be because politically minded people are more likely to vote. The Daily Show could discourage voting, and still the political minded would vote more than the apathetic, and the Daily Show numbers would be higher than average because of the corrolation with politically minded. (or in short, corrolation isn’t causation)
An argument could be made that Daily Show raises awareness of political matters, and thereby create more voters, but without that argument, pointing out that Daily Show watchers vote more doesn’t establish that the Daily Show isn’t a deterrent, because of the confounding variable of political awareness.
Although I guess this is just academic, since the mechanism that I was proposing for this has been discredited.
I think you overestimate the rationality of humanity.
How do you know that?
Assertion retracted, I was trying to anticipate some counter arguments, and thought that one would be that a cable TV show wouldn’t have enough viewers to matter, even though it’s a pretty popular one. I thought if I conceded that, that the discussion would avoid that point, and be more about whether my logic was correct, and not about whether the Daily Show was big enough to matter. If it is big enough to matter, great.
I’m sure it does more good than harm. There’s nowhere else the 18-34 comedy central crowd is getting political info. It’s not like TDS is dedicated completely to politics, either. They find absurdity in many events, on a worldwide scale or small town one.
That’s BS. I’m in that crowd and I regularly watch network news and read the Washington Post plus readng this board and the political discussions. I’m sure I’m not unique.
I’d say you’d be much more likely to vote. The show itself features heavily in political news; if you don’t find that at least moderately engaging, you’re not going to find the show as a whole terrifically interesting. Now that I mention it, I’m going to say that it and the Colbert Report actually foster political sensibilities. I remember watching… I think it was the episode the day before last presidential elections… Jon Stewart took a minute at the end of the show to basically beg his viewers to go out and vote.
I vote in everything I’m eligable for; while I read the occasional paper, and skim Slashdot and Google News daily, I’d say well over half of my information about U.S. politics comes from the two aforementioned shows. Without them, I’m not sure I’d know there were ‘midterm elections’ happening at all. I sure wouldn’t care. Watching them, I know a fair bit about them, and am really looking forward to the hour-long Stewart/Colbert special.
I say if someone is idiot enough to decide not to engage in the democratic process because of something they saw on a mock news program, we probably don’t want them voting anyway.
I’d like to explicitly state that this contradicts nothing from the OP. I made no value judgement about whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I just had an idea, and wanted to establish whether it was accurate or not.
I also think you and Marley23 are underestimating how much cultural attitudes and backdrops affect our decisiion making process, but I guess that’s something for another thread.
The people who you’re suggesting TDS would discourage from voting are, therefore, probably the least likely to be discouraged by it.
That might be the first time.
Okay, that piece they just did about midterm elections COULD be read as discouraging turnout…
They showed that four years ago.
I think negative campaigning only discourages the underinformed from voting. It makes them frustrated with the whole political process. They come away from negative ads thinking, “All politicians are corrupt liars. Why bother?”
Informed voters, on the other hand, know that there are very real issues at stake, and very real consequences which flow from their votes.
My impression is that viewers of The Daily Show tend to be more informed, and are therefore less likely to throw their hands in the air when the foibles of politicians are exposed.
I’m sure you’re not. Consider it a primer or a gateway then. Something to get you more interested in it, so you get more of the jokes. Plus, last I checked the show was scheduled against network news shows.