Since ancient times, political humor has enabled people to cope with the adversities of life as well as make fun of their leaders' shortcomings. In recent decades, the late night comics of television have used a variety of formats to ridicule those who possess political authority. Be it the stumble-prone Gerald Ford, the aging Lothario Bill Clinton, the malapropisms of George W. Bush, the overly reserved demeanor of Barack Obama or the outrageous pronouncements of tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump, the White House consistently provides a rich source of humor in politics. The political humor examined here focuses on content from The Daily Show on Comedy Central, The Late Show on CBS, The Tonight Show on NBC, Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO, and Saturday Night Live on NBC. Together these programs provide a wide range of comic treatments of recent presidents.

This work's final chapter turns to the future of political humor. What might the comedians do during the remaining years of the Trump presidency? How might the political comedy of the 2020 presidential campaign be shaped by the experience of comedians during the Trump presidency? Finally, how might the comedic treatment of Trump shape political humor as it addresses subsequent presidents? In this chapter, we examine the growing linkages of politics and humor and consider whether Trump's own success as a celebrity and entertainer turned president may pave the way for future celebrity candidates, perhaps even among the comedians who find so much to mock in the Trump presidency.

Using a recent Pew Research Center survey of news and entertainment media consumption, this chapter examines the political values of viewers of late night political comedy. Viewers of comedy are also more engaged consumers of news, reporting higher utility of a variety of social media outlets beyond those connected to late night comedy. This chapter also examines how growing numbers of voters, particularly younger ones, are focusing more on political humor as they learn about politics and how that political humor strengthens their political interests and opinions.

Content analysis of 2008 election news compared evening newscasts on BBC1, BBC2, BBC World and ITV in the United Kingdom and ARD Tagesthemen and ZDF heute journal in Germany with those airing on ABC, CBS, and NBC. We found that the UK and German newscasts were more focused on matters of substance than the US networks. Although US and international news coverage both treated Barack Obama more positively than John McCain by roughly similar margins, the international outlets portrayed Sarah Palin almost as positively as they did Obama (and far more positively than US news reports did). With the exception of the differences in reports on Palin, the European news data are consistent with an "international two-step flow" pattern in which US media content influences news coverage of the US in international media.

Years before he became a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was a rich source of humor, both within New York City and for the country as a whole. This chapter examines the pre-2016 intersections of Trump and the mass media. Starting with his days as a publicity-hungry Manhattan developer and recounting his frequent use of news and entertainment media to draw more attention to himself, this chapter examines how Trump built a public brand that relied in no small part on late night comedy. The chapter explores how Trump used and was used by entertainment media during the years before his presidential campaign, when he was a guest host on Saturday Night Live (and a frequent target of the show), and how he regularly appeared on late night comedy programs and talk shows long before he became host of The Apprentice, a popular reality television show that further established his national reputation.

Abstract In this paper we explore the creation of jokes told on late night talk shows targeted at major party nominees for president from 1992–2008. We hypothesize that the number of jokes told about candidates are related to variations in polling numbers, mainstream media coverage, and party identification of the candidates. Our results show a positive relationship between the number of jokes told at a candidate’s expense and the amount of negative news coverage about the candidate. In addition, we find that Republicans are targeted with more frequency than Democrats. Results suggest that favorability ratings and whether or not a presidential candidate is an incumbent has no effect on the number of jokes targeting a candidate.

This chapter reports on results of a new content analysis project that examined the jokes aired by late-night comics, using two different studies of late-night humor conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) of George Mason University. For the primary campaign, it examines 2,854 jokes that targeted political figures, whether or not they were running for president, from September 1, 2015 through April 30, 2016, by which time it had become clear which candidates were going to be Republican and Democratic presidential nominees. The chapter also examines the subjects of the 3,008 jokes that focused on the two presidential nominees between September 1, 2015 and November 11, 2016, a few days after the presidential election. To illustrate the significance of the data, it also examines the ways in which late-night comics have increasingly shaped political discourse over the past several decades.

Content analysis research of news coverage of presidential elections conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs and by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press demonstrated that both traditional and new media focused on horse-race coverage at the expense of treatment of issues in 2012. Network news coverage of the 2012 nomination campaign employed the Robinson and Sheehan (1983) “triage” model, with the most positive coverage devoted to long-shot candidates like Ron Paul and John Huntsman. Online news sources discussing the 2012 general election, particularly Twitter, were notably more favorable of Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. Facebook postings, blogs and network television news also treated the incumbent president somewhat more positively than his Republican challenger.

This study examines a unique dataset of polling results from two comparable surveys, which asked the same questions of US. atmospheric and ocean scientists in 1991 and 2007.Using this measure of change in scientific opinion over time, the data shed light on the evolution of a consensus over a critical and dynamic 16-year period in the history of climate science.In 1991, considerable uncertainty and disagreement existed among climate scientists.With the passage of time and additional research, by 2007 a clear consensus had emerged, along with increased confidence in the opinions expressed.This is the path that scientific progress is expected to take, and it argues against charges that the climate science community rushed to judgment or engaged in groupthink on global warming.The period 1991 to 2007 was a time of considerable expansion in the scientific community's conclusions about global warming, as reflected in the reports of bodies such as the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate.In 1990, the IPCC issued its First Assessment Report [1,2], expressing confidence that global warming was occurring, but noting uncertainty on the anthropogenic origin of observed warming.By 2007 (just prior to data collection in the survey reported here), the initial sections of the Fourth IPCC assessment 2 were released, expressing "very high confidence" that human activity was causing global warming (p.3), and describing evidence of warming as "unequivocal" (p.5).In addition to the synthesis reports, results of surveys of scientists can offer another measure of the state of scientific opinion.In 1990, an international sample of "global environmental change" scientists showed strong support for action to address climate change, but lower scientific certainty-65% thought there was a more than 50% chance of 2 degree Celsius warming over the subsequent 100 years [3].A further survey indicated a divide among scientists over the existence of anthropogenic warming [4].A 1996 international survey of climate scientists and meteorologists indicated fairly high certainty in long-range warming sufficient to justify policy action [5].The scientists expressed limited trust, however, in climate models and uncertainty on the specific impacts of climate change.Between 2006 and 2008, three surveys of scientists with different sampling frames all provided a more recent picture of scientific opinion [6][7][8].They demonstrated broad confidence in the methods, and consensus on the findings of climate science, in areas that are prerequisites to basic agreement on human causation.For example, 90% of one sample concurred that temperatures have risen over pre-industrial levels [9].While confidence in scientific understanding of certain elements of the climate system was high (e.g., the role of albedo), lingering uncertainty remained on some of the predictions and other fine points of the workings of the climate system (e.g., the role of cloud cover [6]).These surveys, however, fail to provide a rigorous longitudinal perspective.Each employed its own survey frame, question wording, and sampling and administration methodology.While broad trends may be discernable from examining such disparate datasets, and worthy efforts have been conducted in this regard [10][11][12][13], an applesto-apples comparison would provide a far more precise measure of changes in scientific opinion.The current study addresses the need for longitudinal data on scientific opinion about climate change by comparing the results of two surveys of US atmospheric and ocean scientists-one administered in 1991 and one in 2007-designed with similar methodological profiles and virtually identical question wordings, allowing for superior comparison of the survey results from these two points in time.This study also examines a richer array of topics than prior longitudinal analyses.

Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Global Communication and the US Government Chapter 2. The World is Watching, Don't Look Back: News about US Politicians, People and Polities Chapter 3. The Obama Presidency: International Media Perspectives Chapter 4. The George W. Bush Presidency: International Media Perspectives Chapter 5. US Foreign Policy and International News: Comparing Obama and Bush Chapter 6. International News Perspectives on the 2008 US Presidential Election Chapter 7. Globalization, International News and the US Government Appendix References Index

Content analysis of front page New York Times stories during the first and second years of the Barack Obama presidency revealed news coverage that was far more positive in tone than the norm for recent U.S. presidents, particularly with respect to foreign policy coverage. While coverage of Obama was somewhat less positive during 2010 when compared to 2009, the Obama findings overall reveal a much longer honeymoon than seen in the past. Coverage of specific problematic policy areas, like offshore drilling issues in the wake of the BP oil spill, was particularly negative. Coverage of arms control matters was very positive in tone in 2010 for Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.Related Articles Farnsworth, Stephen J, and S. Robert Lichter. 2012. “.” Politics & Policy 40 (): 69‐91. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00338.x/abstract Bode, Leticia, and Valerie M. Hennings. 2012. “.” Politics & Policy 40 (): 221‐257. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00350.x/abstract Fogarty, Brian J. 2011. .” Politics & Policy 39 (): 1053‐1076. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00326.x/abstract Related Media Balz, Dan, and Jon Cohen. 2010. “.” . July 13. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp‐dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071205453.html Calderone, Michael. 2009. “.” Politco.com. March 4. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19570.html Shear, Michael D. 2010. “.” . February 15. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2010‐02‐15/politics/36853927_1_congressional‐leaders‐white‐house‐advisers‐president‐obama/2

An elite survey of members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union conducted in 2007 reveals that the vast majority of climate scientists positively assess both national print news reports and Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth as informative, with lower grades being assessed on climate change content that appeared on network and cable television news as well as in Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear. Multivariate analysis reveals that more positive scientific assessments are associated in most cases with the level of confidence scientists have in the research conducted by their colleagues as well the severity of the impact they anticipate from global warming in the years ahead.