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Political discourse in the United States has been transformed in recent years by the proliferation of new media formats and genres. In the world of computer-mediated-communication, Internet blogs combine opinion columns and analytical commentaries with user-generated content about current events, as well as commentaries about the traditional journalism that covers those events (Perlmutter, 2008; Davis, 2009). On cable television, new opinion formats have introduced new styles of mediated deliberation, while challenging the effectiveness of the more traditional styles of detached commentary (Jacobs and Townsley, 2011). Among the most interesting and innovative of these new formats are the political comedy programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. These shows have been surprisingly effective at gaining entry into the political public sphere, and are now a regular part of the political conversation in the United States (Baym, 2009).
The new political comedy programs have several distinctive properties that make them particularly interesting for cultural sociologists who study media and the public sphere. First, because they introduce new meaning structures and performance styles into the discussion about matters of common concern, they have the potential to increase discursive complexity (Jacobs and Townsley, 2011). Second, because these programs criticize the dominant styles of political communication as well as the communicative practices of the dominant media institutions, they are potential agents of reflexivity (McBeth and Clemons, 2011). Third, because they make such heavy use of satire and other comedic forms, they introduce elements of pleasure into the public sphere, in a way that has the potential to increase civic and political engagement (Jacobs, 2004; Van Heertum, 2011). Finally, the hosts of these two programs rely on performance styles that challenge the authenticity/inauthenticity binary in interesting and important ways (Alexander, 2011). For example, because Stephen Colbert never deviates from the character of a conservative pundit that he is playing on the show, it is much more difficult for his audience and his guests to know what he really believes or is trying to accomplish. In a similar way, despite the fact that a 2007 Pew poll found Jon Stewart to be the most trusted news figure in the United States, Stewart himself is always quick to dismiss his show's relevance, emphasizing that it is about 'fake news' and that its...