One facet of the heavily debated concept of infotainment is popular talk shows that host political candidates. Content analyses show that politicians in these programs are interviewed in an overwhelmingly positive style. Using two experiments, we show that this has positive effects on how politicians are perceived by people seeing these interviews. Those who see a talk show interview with a politician are less cynical about this politician than the people who do not see the interview. This effect is stronger for people who are less aware of politics. People with relatively little political awareness also become less cynical about politicians in general after being exposed to such an interview. The opposite seems to happen for people who know more about politics.
Our findings have implications for the debate that is going on about the consequences of infotainment. As exposure to talk show interviews with politicians can both positively influence people’s perceptions of the politicians who are interviewed, but also of politicians in general, these programs may be playing an important role in shaping public opinion toward politics. Because effects are most strongly for people who are least aware of politics and these people are – not by incident – also the target audience of these show, the consequences for society may be considerable.
