A couple of interesting facts from my Masters Thesis. The topic of which is the impact of non-traditional media in educating an electorate (emphasis on late night talk shows and The Daily Show).
John Edwards, Senator from Virginia, announced that he was seeking the democratic nomination for President on the Jon Stewart Show.
Richard Nixon became the first politician to appear on what we currently think of as non-traditional media when he was a guest on Laugh In.
According to a Pew Research poll conducted in 2000, 47 percent of people ages 18 to 29 get news from late night television talk shows.
We are reminded that millions of people can't name their Congressional representatives and ten times more people can identify Judge Wapner (People Court) or Ito (OJ Simpson case) than the Chief Justice of the United States (Harwood, 1996).
The same Pew Research Center Poll (2000) showed that an endorsement for a presidential candidate from Oprah Winfrey would have more positive impact then endorsements from coveted labor unions, Senator Ted Kennedy, or Bill Gates.
In 1824, the first popular election for the President was held in the United States, a staggeringly low 27% of eligible voters turned out to vote. By the end of the century voter turnout of between 70 and 80 percent were normal (Harwood, 1996).
Duesrst, Koloen, and Peterson (2001) found that the content of late night television talk show monologues David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Conan O'Brien actually mirrored the content of actual news broadcasts while emphasizing humor instead of facts.
In the 2000 election between George Bush and Al Gore, traditional news sources such as Time Magazine, Newsweek, Meet The Press, This Week, and Crossfire were a less likely source of information about the two candidates than The Late Show, The Tonight Show, and Politically Incorrect (Niven, Lichter, & Amundson, 2003).
Research shows that using of non-traditional media sources to obtain political information might increase knowledge compared to other sources because messages delivered with humor are more easily recalled (Berg and Lippman, 2001).
Some credit non-traditional media outreach from candidates during the 1992 election cycle as a reason for increased voter involvement (Weaver and Drew, 1995).
Polls conducted after the 1992 presidential election show that half of the respondents claimed that candidate talk show appearances played a role in their voting decisions (Times Mirror, 1993).
My thesis, coming to a website near you(May 2004).