In May (2017), Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University and a comedy fan, released “The Laughter Effect: The [Serious] Role of Comedy in Social Change“, in which she summarizes the research and gives advice on how to use humor to further social issues. As previously described, Chattoo tells of five forms of influence:
- attracting attention & facilitating memory
- feeling: comedy’s route to persuasion
- entering complex social issues
- breaking down social barriers
- sharing with others
In this fifth installment, I run through her last two points.
Breaking down social barriers
Comedy can introduce people, social issues and new norms in non-threatening, “non-othering” ways that encourage identification and connection, rather than alienation.
Here, Chattoo turns to Schiappa and his colleagues for the para social contract hypothesis. Basically, it’s the idea that when we watch TV or movies, we form relationships with the characters, the Friends become our friends, Will (of Will & Grace) becomes our gay friend; it’s the whole premise behind the movie, Nurse Betty.
The idea is that if these portrayals of minority groups are positive, we then have a positive relationship with the minority group, especially if we have few actual friends from or encounters with that minority group.
Smedema and her co-authors have shown this effect to work for people with physical disabilities too, though it’s complicated. As Chattoo explains:
As is the case in other complex social issues, particular portrayals of individuals with challenges may serve to dramatize and widen the gap between them and the audience, inadvertently evoking pity rather than encouraging connections.
Basically, while we have a greater familiarity, that may not lead to an ideal, healthy relationship. It all depends on the depiction.
Sharing with others
People share comedy to create shared cultural moments and display personal identity, amplifying serious messages.
More than ever before, comedy is shareable, and sharing things we like is how many people express themselves. As Chattoo notes,
Sharing a funny media product is a way to express both individual values and identities, and to commemorate shared cultural moments. In the process, sharing with peers anchors and amplifies the original messages.
The first part of this is like the John Cusack line from High Fidelity,
I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films – these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the fuckin’ truth….
Postmodern theorists will argue that identity is a construct, and that the only encounter people have with our identity is via the things we say and do, which often centers around the things we like, so in a sense, they matter very much. There may not even be anything deeper; as Katie Holmes opines in Batman Begins:
However, there’s also the idea that in commemorating “shared cultural moments,” we don’t just reflect the reality around us, but in Kenneth Burke’s terms, we’ve selected portions of the reality, and reflected only the parts of that which we like; therefore we are deflecting reality. That’s what gets anchored and amplified – not all of it.
Further, Campo and friends found that humorous messages are more likely to get shared, and reshared, multiplying the number of people reached. Further this lead “to additive conversation-based effects and not just message-based effects”; people didn’t just absorb it, but interacted with it and talked about it. This is what Fraustino & Ma found about the CDC’s “Zombie Apocalypse” campaign, although we should remember that the campaign not only did not create changes in people’s behavior, but may have made them less likely to respond.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Campo, S., Askelson, N. M., Spies, E., Boxer, C., Scharp, K. M., Losch, M. E., (2013). “Wow, that was funny”: The value of exposure and humor in fostering campaign message sharing. Social Marketing Quarterly, 19(2), 84-96.
Fraustino, J. D., & Ma, L. (2015). CDC’s Use of Social Media and Humor in a Risk Campaign—“Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” Journal of Applied Communication, 222-241.
Schiappa, E., Gregg, P., & Hewes, D. (2005). The para social contact hypothesis. Communication Monographs, 72(1), 92–115.
Smedema, S. M., Ebener, D., & Grist-Gordon, V., (2012). The impact of humorous media on attitudes toward persons with disabilities. Disability & Rehabilitation, 34(17), 1431-1437.
