New research has found that The Colbert Report and The Daily Show — two of the top political comedy TV shows in the United States — can shape viewers’ beliefs about climate change.
“These results dovetail with, while also extending, previous research showing that satirical television news can shape public opinion about other public affairs topics as well as attention to scientific and environmental issues, including climate change,” Paul R. Brewer and Jessica McKnight wrote in their study, which was published in Science Communication.
The researchers noted that news programs often seek to “balance” their coverage of climate change by interviewing climate change deniers, even though an overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that climate change is occurring.
“Thus, satirical television news coverage may offer counterpoints to climate change skepticism in public discourse and public opinion.”
The researchers had 424 young adults watch a 1-minute clip from either the television program Finding Bigfoot, The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report.
“Folks, last week President Obama cynically used the inaugural address to push his radical prosurvival agenda,” host Stephen Colbert said while mocking climate change denialists in The Colbert Report clip from 2013, which was watched by 174 participants.
In The Daily Show clip, which was from 2011, host Jon Stewart humorously observed that a researcher paid by the oil industry to debunk climate change ended up confirming its existence. “Yes, the study, funded by the Koch brothers, confirms that the original research was actually correct. The earth is getting warmer — or, judging by this graphic, getting more embarrassed,” Stewart joked.
The Bigfood clip did not mention climate change and was used as a control.
Those who watched the comedic clips were more likely to believe climate change is real. Brewer and McKnight found that certainty that global warming is happening was around half a point greater among those who viewed The Daily Show or The Colbert Report than among those who viewed Finding Bigfoot.
Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, they found no significant difference between liberal and conservatives. “The effects of the clips on certainty that global warming is happening did not vary across viewers’ political beliefs,” they noted.
However, conservatives were more likely to view Colbert as serious in his climate change denial, rather than satirical. Brewer and McKnight said conservatives appeared to have interpreted “his ambiguous messages in ways that reflected their own ideological orientations.”
“Given that conservatism is typically associated with greater climate change skepticism (including in the sample of participants for this study), some conservative viewers may have interpreted Colbert as being serious when he stated that ‘there is no national consensus on climate change.’ Liberal viewers, on the other hand, were presumably more likely to interpret Colbert’s comments as ironic,” the researchers wrote.