The Influence of Parodies on Political Schemas: Exploring the Tina Fey-Sarah Palin Phenomenon
Date
2009-12
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
During the 2008 presidential campaign season, Tina Fey’s timely impersonations of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live attracted overwhelming attention, generating buzz of a possible "Fey Effect" to explain the inverse SNL rating surge and Palin rating plummet. This study sought to ascertain if this "Fey Effect" was real and quantifiable by measuring if Fey’s impersonations of Palin rendered caricatured traits more salient in the construction of the candidate, namely aspects related to her intelligence, competence, experience and rural background. We employed Schema Theory as the theoretical mechanism to explore if the timely parodies were used to fill-out perceptions of a relatively unknown candidate. We administered a two-part online survey with a three-conditions-between-subjects design to over 200 undergraduate participants from a large Eastern university. The second survey was administered directly after exposure to either a clip of the CBS interview between Katie Couric and Sarah Palin, the SNL parody of that interview, or a travel video as a control. Findings show that exposure to both the interview and its parody cause viewers to devote more cognitive attention to Palin’s intelligence, competence and experience. In addition, the SNL parody is unique in its influence in rendering rural traits more salient in associations with Palin. Ultimately, this research finds that the agency of influence rests in the real Palin, allowing us to establish evidence of a "Palin Effect."