F*ck universal health care.

- Love Frank

1.) The authors want to know what effect The Daily Show has on its viewers. It is an important area of study because the Daily Show is one of the most popular Late night talk shows on television that talks about politics.
2.) The authors tested four hypotheses. The first was that young viewers would evaluate candidates more negatively after watching the Daily show. The second was that young viewers would evaluate John Kerry more negatively than George Bush after viewing the Daily Show. The third is that young viewers would become more cynical about the electoral process and the fourth was that they would be more cynical about the news media in general.
3.) The findings demonstrated that the Daily show does in fact make young people’s evaluations of presidential candidates more negative regardless of people’s partisan or other demographic characteristics. The findings were not statistically significant for the second hypothesis that John Kerry would receive less favorable evaluations than George Bush. However, both the third and the fourth hypotheses were supported. Young people become more cynical about both the electoral process and the news media. Also many of the viewers of the Daily show felt that they understood political issues from watching the Daily Show. This is because they are young, which makes them impressionable. They don’t watch mainstream news so they are not exposed to hard news and further, more than half of young viewers received their news from the Daily Show.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/detoc/assoc/strange.html