Irony and Outrage

For almost a decade, journalists and pundits have been asking why we don't see successful examples of political satire from conservatives or of opinion talk radio from liberals. This book turns that question on its head to argue that opinion talk is the political satire of the right and political satire is the opinion programming of the left. They look and feel like two different animals because their audiences are literally, two different animals. In Irony and Outrage, political and media psychologist Dannagal Goldthwaite Young explores the aesthetics, underlying logics, and histories of these two seemingly distinct genres, making the case that they should be thought of as the logical extensions of the psychology of the left and right, respectively. One genre is guided by ambiguity, play, deliberation, and openness, while the other is guided by certainty, vigilance, instinct, and boundaries. While the audiences for Sean Hannityand John Oliver come from opposing political ideologies, both are high in political interest, knowledge, and engagement, and both lack faith in many of our core democratic institutions. Young argues that the roles that these two genres play for their viewers are strikingly similar: galvanizing the opinion ofthe left or the right, mobilizing citizens around certain causes, and expressing a frustration with traditional news coverage while offering alternative sources of information and meaning. One key way in which they differ, however, concludes Young, is in their capacity to be exploited by special interests and political elites. Drawing on decades of research on political and media psychology and media effects, as well as historical accounts and interviews with comedians and comedy writers, Young unpacks satire's liberal "bias" and juxtaposes it with that of outrage's conservative "bias." She details how traits like tolerance for ambiguity and the motivation to engage with complex ideas shape our preferences for art, music, and literature; and how those same traits correlate with political ideology. In turn, sheillustrates how these traits help explain why liberals and conservatives vary in the genres of political information they prefer to create and consume.

[Irony and Outrage] is engaging, funny, and particularly informative about the differences between liberals' and conservatives' political media consumption and its potential effects., Irony & Outrage undoubtedly makes a radical contribution to the fields of political communication and psychology of communication by advancing our understanding of a topic that is both a long-standing academic concern and a central issue in the current national conversation in the United States and beyond., [Y]oung's writing style here is quite approachable and should appeal to a wide audience beyond the ivy towers of academia., Irony and Outrage is already a classic in the field, and it will be read, I hope, by generations of graduate students., Especially those who teach social policy classes at the undergraduate level should benefit from having [Irony and Outrage] on their mental horizons. Students will find it engaging to read and valuable for sorting out debates on topical issues.

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young is Professor of Communication at the University of Delaware and the Center for Political Communication, a Distinguished Research Fellow with the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and member of the National Institute for Civil Discourse Research Network. Her research on the psychology, content, and effects of political entertainment has been widely published in academic journals and mediaoutlets, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Variety, and National Public Radio. She has also been an improvisational comedian with ComedySportz Philadelphia since 1999, and is the creator and host of Dr. Young Unpacks, a playful deep dive into the psychology of media, politics, andpop culture.