Measuring the effects of comedy news programming: An agenda setting experiment
Résumé
In an experimental design, the researcher exposed participants to clips about the same issues from hard and soft news sources. Participants were asked to rate the importance of the issue as a national priority and complete measures of source credibility and attentiveness. Results indicate that although participants perceived soft news as less credible than hard news, both sources had similar agenda setting effects. Implications of these findings are discussed.