• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.73
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• pp.7-34
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• 2015

This study attends to the effects of political entertainment as a newly emerging television genre on citizens' political talk. Particularly, this study suggests audience involvement and political information efficacy as key psychological factors that mediate the relationship between political entertainment and political discussion. More specifically, audience involvement was deemed as a conclusive concept that consists of such sub-dimensions as audience identification and parasocial interaction with program characters and transportation into the messages. Among 317 participants in an online survey, a total of 273 subjects, who had at least some viewing experience with political entertainment TV programs, were included in the final analysis. According to the findings, softer programs that piggyback political information on top of their entertainment content were more likely to increase viewers' identification and transportation. The viewer experience of identification further heightened the level of political information efficacy, which in turn positively contributed to one's willingness to participate in political talk and to hear the other side. It also appeared that political information efficacy significantly mediated the relationship between political entertainment viewing and political talk.