Politieke satire, wat moet je ermee?

It is often said that young people have little interest in politics. They are not only less interested in politics. The interest in the traditional media, which is the number one information source regarding political information, is also becoming less. Over the years a lot of research has been done. These researches show that youngsters are little involved in politics, that they are not active in politics and that they have lack of political knowledge. Very few research has been done concerning the experiences that young people do have with politics. Therefore, in this study the focus is situated on the way young people are informed about politics through popular media. The research question of this thesis that has been answered is: In what way do Dutch youngsters give meaning to political satire on television? Answering this question was important, because of the lack of research that has been done regarding this subject. After a literature study, two focus groups were performed. The information obtained from the literature study and the focus groups has been used to create the survey. Highly educated Dutch youngsters from different high schools have completed the survey. The results of this survey show that the highly educated Dutch youngsters find it important to have some political knowledge. But they also show that the youngsters think politics is boring, complicated and hard. A way to make the boring and complicated politics more attractive, is political satire. All the survey results are incorporated into a multiple linear regression analysis in order to answer the research question. Three independent variables significantly correlate with the meaning to political satire. When respondents perceive politics as difficult, they give meaning to political satire in a positive way. When the meaning about the Dutch satirical television program Koefnoen positively increases, the meaning to political satire positively increases too. Also, when the respondents criticize Koefnoen as an accessible program, the meaning to political satire positively increases.