Explaining Crisis through Infotaintment. Effects of the Television Satire in Spain

Political satire programs on television are experiencing a small boom in democratic societies. One of its themes is the economic crisis star, centered in ridiculizing not only the protagonists but also in their victims, explaining what were the causes and what could be the ways to tackle the crisis. Through humor, these programs reach millions of viewers, presenting serious issues of political communication with comic format, at the same time entertaining and educational. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of such programs on the public to know whether these programs are fundamentally comic dimension or can have a formative role and public mobilization. Analyzing data from studies that have been made in some countries to measure the impact of such programs, and presenting the results of a survey conducted in Spain, one of the countries hardest hit by the economic crisis in Western Europe, this paper will try to test the possible impact of such programs on public opinion.