Beyond Infotainment

Abstract

Infotainment is a generally pejorative term used to indicate a broad range of normative concerns surrounding the generation, dissemination, and consumption of political information packaged in entertaining formats. This chapter argues that the term infotainment has outlasted its usefulness as a theoretical concept and details a notion of hybrid political-entertainment media as a more useful approach to conceptualize a core mode of political campaigning, persuasion, and influence within a rapidly transforming media environment. The chapter then offers a typology detailing three primary modes of hybrid media—TV chat, political satire, and partisan punditry—and explores extant scholarship on persuasive effects, public awareness influence, and macro-social cultural shifts associated with various popular political-entertainment forms.