Holbert to present study on satire's influence

On April 11, Lance Holbert will present some research on the influence of satire. An abstract of his talk is below.

Satire as a form of humor and social criticism has been undertheorized in the political communication literature. Two types of satire, horatian and juvenalian, will be outlined in the talk and several hypotheses positing divergent effects for these types of satire will be outlined. The pure random-placement experiment consists of a 3 (stimulus: horatian satire, juvenalian satire, traditional criticism) X 2 (ability: high, low) between-subjects design. The focus of the persuasive messages (satirical and traditional) is on Senator Hillary Clinton (D ­NY) and her plan for universal health care, and the study was conducted within a month's time of the State of Ohio's Democratic primary held on March 4, 2008. The dependent variables focused on in the study include thought listing, counter arguing, as well as a series of attitudinal outcomes. This study was conducted by a research team that includes four OSU School of Communication graduate students: Jay Hmielowski, Parul Jain, Julie Lather, and Alyssa Morey. Each graduate student provided valuable insights for the project and will be leading their own research papers generated from this study's data. The results presented by Professor Holbert will reflect only an initial set of insights.