Communication

For centuries, political humor and satire have been an important part of life in democratic societies. Respected and often feared for the influence they are perceived to have on citizens and elites, satirists have occupied a privileged role, both throughout history and in contemporary society. ...

If politics is a serious matter and humour a funny one, this volume investigates how and why the boundaries between the two are blurred: politics can be represented in a humorous manner and humour can have a serious intent. Political humour conveys criticism against the political status quo and/or recycles and reinforces dominant views on politics. The data analysed comes from European states with different sociopolitical histories and traditions and the methodologies adopted originate in different fields (discourse analysis, folklore and cultural studies, media studies, sociolinguistics, sociology, theatre semiotics). ...

This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logistics motivate most actions) genre becomes "mixed." Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. ...

Political humor has been a staple of late-night television for decades. The Trump White House, however, has received significantly greater attention than that of past presidents, such as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and even Bill Clinton. In response to Trump's strident politics, late-night comics, including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah and Jimmy Fallon, have sounded key policy notes, further blurring the boundary between news and satire. Weekly humorists, including John Oliver and Samantha Bee, extend the critique with in-depth probing of key issues, while Saturday Night Live continues to tap the progression from outrage to outrageousness. Using unique content analysis techniques and qualitative discussions of political humor, Farnsworth and Lichter show how late-night political humor, and these seven programs in particular, have responded to the Trump presidency. ...

In an age when Jon Stewart frequently tops lists of most-trusted newscasters, the films of Michael Moore become a dominant topic of political campaign analysis, and activists adopt ironic, fake personas to attract attention--the satiric register has attained renewed and urgent prominence in political discourse. Amber Day focuses on the parodist news show, the satiric documentary, and ironic activism to examine the techniques of performance across media, highlighting their shared objective of bypassing standard media outlets and the highly choreographed nature of current political debate.

A research journal dedicated to communication & politics.

This is the main article index for the field of Communications and Mass Media.

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts provides abstracts and indexing of the international literature of political science and international relations, along with complementary fields, including international law, political geography, and public administration/policy. ...

The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.

With the new millennium came a new source of political information–comedic news. Though it existed prior to the 21st century–indeed, its roots can be traced to 17th-century English country fairs–the genre came into its own during the 2004 presidential election, when young voters in particular began to rely on comedic news as their primary source of political information. ...

The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008 is an online exhibition presenting more than 300 television commercials from every election year since 1952, when the first campaign TV ads aired.