Our Goals

We are interested in studying the effects of "fake news" programs such as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report on American youth. Though this topic is fairly new, and there are still a lot of questions to be answered, we think this is important to examine because satirical news has become the main source of information for many Americans 18-24 years of age. We aim to discover the ways in which such programs affect internal political efficacy, or confidence in one's ability to understand and participate in politics, and attitudes towards the American democratic system as a whole. To do this, we will examine the actual content and format of fake news shows as well as studies and experiments that have been conducted in recent years.