Political communication and satire: Arab political satire shows and desensitization effect

This paper examines the effect of Arab political satire on political participation, through the examination of a possible mediation effect of emotions. It also provides an overview of the evolution of political communication into political satire shows and examines the history of political satire in the world and in the Arab region. The devolution of the political speech brought by the information revolution has resulted in new forms of communication that appeal to the younger generation, one of which is political satire shows. To examine their effect, an online experiment was done on 176 respondents who were distributed on three groups containing Horatian satire and Juvenalian satire video segments taken from Al Saleet Al Ekhbary and Joeshow shows, and their respective hard news coverage. Respondents were asked afterwards to report their emotions and their willingness to participate in politics. Main findings show a positive effect of Juvenalian satire on political participation and a negative one of Juvenalian satire, dominance of negative emotions and desensitization of anxiousness and sadness emotions in highly cynical sample. The study also examines relevance to issue and source liking as possible mediators of the effect of satire on emotions.