Baumgartner's Article "the Daily Show Effect"

In Baumgartner's article "The Daily Show Effect" the author examines the influence of the Daily Show, a political satire, on young viewer's perceptions of politicians. The author hypothesizes that political messages, delivered with humor, are more persuasive and more memorable to young (18-24) viewers and therefore, tend to be more influential. Late night satire shows, such as the Daily Show, Letterman or Leno, poke fun at people in the public life, especially politicians and reporters and are therefore declared to be "soft news". On the contrary, CNN or CBS evening news and other traditional news programs are referred to as "hard news". Even though, Baumgartner's findings suggest, that soft news with a satirical touch influences young viewers by lowering support for both presidential candidates (p. 361), increase cynicism, and might form unfavorable perceptions, I believe that humor could be the first step leading young viewers to form a political opinion, favor discussions, and encourage the seek for further information and therefore, eventually, could lead to a public sphere, in which debates find place and political discourse is encouraged. As a young, inattentive audience is normally hard to reach, soft news could close the gap between entertainment and news. In contrast to Baumgartner, who uses soft news as a word with negative connotations, I believe that the quest for news and information, no matter if it's about hard or soft news, is a desirable goal for political education and discourse.

We should also ask ourselves how political views and affiliations are formed for young people. In great parts, parents, social conditions and friends are responsible for the way we evaluate political topics and who we vote for. Once we have formed our personality, many factors influence the way we look at political issues.

Furthermore, when it comes to communication, humor always tends to be a good way to stay in the mind of the audience, make them curious about what they have seen or heard and makes us think, also about serious topics and issues.

Growing up in Germany, the political late night show, the "Harald Schmidt Show" was very famous among high school and college students, poking fun at politicians and current debates. Guest on that show, jokes and new topics would always be debated by everyone on the schoolyard, which eventually encouraged me to keep up with political topics.