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Does gender matter? Comic hosts, audience reception, and the processing of political satire content.

Public Policy Relevance Statement Political satire influences our public culture, impacting attitudes toward policy, politicians, and government institutions. Given the pressing issue of COVID-19, childcare, and the economic participation of women in the workforce, the salience of the message matters more than the gender of the comic host delivering the critical content. Female viewers take these humorous messages seriously and are less likely to engage in message discounting than male viewers given a salient issue debate. Extending previous research on comedy processing in new theoretical directions, the experimental study (N = 206) considers the differential impact of varying comic and audience member gender when exposing viewers to politically salient satire content on message discounting, perceived informativeness, and message elaboration. As a first step, the analysis confirms that exposure to political satire on a serious topic encourages less message discounting, is perceived as more informative, and results in greater message elaboration than exposure to less serious political satire content. Furthermore, the results suggest that female viewers are less likely to engage in message discounting when presented with salient comedy on the issue of COVID-19, childcare, and economic participation. Variation in message discounting is impacted more by viewer gender than variation in the gender of the comic program host. The implications of the findings are discussed as well as the need for greater host diversity in late-night comedy and political satire programming.