Camaj, Lindita2019-06-242019-06-24December 22018-12December 2https://hdl.handle.net/10657/4072The 2016 presidential election cast light on political polarization in the United States. Generally, the discussion regarding polarization in communication scholarship is concerned with selective exposure to partisan media and its effects. The prospect of political ‘echo chambers’ that result worries communication scholars our polarized media is detrimental to democratic discourse. One example of partisan programming is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (LWT), an acclaimed political comedy program that critiques and comments on contemporary politics with a ‘liberal’ slant. Influenced by the Reinforcing Spirals Framework, the present study finds Democrats are more likely to agree with John Oliver on net neutrality issues, but only if the participants were exposed to John Oliver’s video clip on net neutrality. Similarly, previous exposure to LWT was associated with higher intentions to participate for those exposed to the clip. The results shed light on the process of political polarization in the United States.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Political comedyPoliticsEcho chambersEcho chamber effectLast Week TonightPolitical polarization2019-06-24Thesisborn digital