The Most Trusted Team in News: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Collaborative Comic Activism and Public Intellectualism for Youth

Abstract

<p>In a news industry that seems to have lost its way, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart occupies a critical space in the public sphere, remapping traditional news categories to create a hybrid official/alternative/popular style, and restructuring audience demographics to include leftist college students and moderate conservatives, all of whom flock to a format that resolves to search for truth and to combat those who stand in its way. Host Jon Stewart is a revolutionary public figure who combines the roles of concerned citizen, comic activist and public intellectual to gain trust, moral authority, and respect from an audience tired of the split-screen debates, punditry and bullshit, and thirsty for a reinvigoration of critical analysis and political engagement.</p>