Communicating Political Humor in the Media: How Culture Influences Satire and Irony

This anthology of studies is a follow-up to Political Humor Worldwide: The Cultural Context of Political Comedy, Satire, and Parody. It further examines political humor as a distinct sub-discipline of political communication, influenced and shaped by a country’s culture. The book’s contributors, experts drawn from the academic fields of political science, communication, linguistics, sociology, culture studies, political psychology, and others, offer an assortment of studies from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on political humor in the media, the authors offer a panorama of political humor―including political satire, parody, and cartooning―in Spain, Poland, Montenegro, Turkey, Japan, Australia, Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others. They detail political humor’s multifaceted and versatile nature, suggesting that national culture and political humor expressed in the news media are intertwined; thus, understanding political humor requires looking at the cultural landscape of a given country or society. The book helps readers to better understand the factors that shape political humor across the globe in a variety of political and media systems.

Ofer Feldman is an Emeritus Professor of Political Psychology and Behavior, and Adjunct Researcher at Doshisha University; and Affiliated Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. His research centers on the psychological underpinnings of mass and elite political behavior in Japan, and he has extensively published journal articles and book chapters on issues related to political communication and persuasion, political leadership, and political culture. His books include Talking Politics in Japan Today (2004), When Politicians Talk: The Cultural Dynamics of Public Speaking (2021, edited), Politicians’ Rhetoric: The Psychology of Words and Facial Expressions (2022, in Japanese, with Ken Kinoshita), Adversarial Political Interviewing: Worldwide Perspectives During Polarized Times (2022, edited), Political Debasement: Incivility, Contempt, and Humiliation in Parliamentary and Public Discourse (2023, edited), and Debasing Political Rhetoric: Dissing Opponents, Journalists, and Minorities in Populist Leadership Communication (2023, edited). In 2021, he was elected Honorary Chair of the Research Committee on Political Psychology, International Political Science Association.