Effects paper sample section.
Synthesized:
A number of different studies have been performed focusing on the influence late night comedy has on the voting public. According to the study performed by Baum (2003), because viewers of late night comedy tend to be younger in age and generally less politically knowledgeable, they may be incidentally receiving political information without the knowledge of how to separate facts from exaggeration, resulting in a greater influence upon those individuals.
Most late night comedy hosts tell jokes and stories about a given candidate repeatedly focusing more on physical faults then political views. Young (2004) conducted a study which tallied the number of times a talk show host made a joke about different candidates and what the content of the joke was. He found that late night comedy shows tend to focus in on a given fault of repeatedly emphasis on different faults among candidates more then others. With this continual exposure to simplified representations of the candidates, individuals may become influenced to sway the way of the host without even realizing it is happening.
Yet the talk show hosts themselves don’t agree with the idea that they influence voters in any given direction. When asked about this idea of influence, David Letterman replied saying, “I would guess that very few votes were cast based on a joke that either Jay Leno or I made” (Berner, 2001, p.3). Some talk show hosts go further to say that viewers must have a general knowledge of the facts in order to understand the jokes being presented. If a viewer heard a joke in which they hadn’t heard the factual information that joke is based off of, the joke would cease to be entertaining. Even with this debate on the floor, studies still hold strong to the idea that exposure to late night comedy has an effect on the viewing publics opinion of candidates (Young, 2004).
Note:
The focus is on actual research studies (ex. Baum - 2003 and Young -2004).
When a conclusion (or implication) is drawn it comes from the research studies not the author's opinion (see the first paragraph).
The studies are synthesized with other material to create a nice flow (ex. the paper isn't Smith found this, Jones found that - a simple listing and description of research study results).
It acknowledges that there are disagreements within this field of research.
Unsynthesized:
Baum (2003) studied x and found y.
Young (2004) studied x1 and found z.
Berner (2001) studied x2 and found a.