How Satirical News Impacts Affective Responses, Learning, and Persuasion: A Three-Level Random-Effects Meta-Analysis

Satirical news blends entertainment with information and opinion. Satire can thus impact various audience responses, such as positive negative affect, learning, persuasion. However, the presence size of these communicative effects have been debated. We conducted a three-level random-effects meta-analysis on satirical ( k = 70, N total 22,969). compared to two reference categories: (1) control messages no or irrelevant information, (2) regular similar informational content. Results demonstrate that (vs. regular) increased affective responses message discounting. By contrast, satire learning messages, but not news. find limited evidence for main effect we different moderating effects, indicating persuasion are stronger Republicans other voters), student general-population) samples, TV online print satire), targeting social actors.