(Un)Funny Against All Odds: The Changing Landscape of Humour in Politics

Abstract

The article wants to set the stage for the rest of the special issue titled ‘From resistance to legitimation: The changing role of humour in politics’ by providing an overview of some the key concepts, theories and approaches to humour. It begins by considering different concepts of and some of the theoretical approaches to the functions and implications of humour including relief, superiority and incongruity as well as carnival theory and the role of parody. From these ideas, it outlines several functions of using humour in politics which include the raising of public attention and distraction, provocation and isolation from critique, humour as a means of persuasion and anxiety management as well as the use of humour as a means of stabilizing and de-stabilizing hierarchies. Turning to the main contribution of the special issue it outlines the changing relationship of humour in politics from a means of critique of power to a means of legitimation of power. It places the contribution of the special issue in this debate and holds that humour plays an ambiguous role and calls for further research into the dark and unfunny side of humour in politics.

With war, crisis, famine and human rights violations politics and international relations seems far removed from the issue of humour. Humour is frequently seen as entertainment without recognising its contribution to and use for political discourse (Lockyer & Pickering, 2008) as the distinction between serious and unserious discourse is upheld. The role of political humour in IR remains under researched (Malmvig, 2022) and due to its connection to entertainment the serious political impacts and effects are not considered enough (Nieuwenhuis & Zijp, 2022, p. 343). Yet the phenomenon of humour stands at the intersection of politics, culture and society. Humour is omnipresent, positively assessed and favoured in most of today´s societies (Billig, 2005; Lockyer & Pickering, 2008). Humour practices are an essential aspect of culture which can be used as both a form of criticism of and resistance to politics as well as a form of legitimation of politics by the political elite in order to gain support from the public. Humour ‘offers a unique channel for establishing political statements’ (Ridanpää, 2014a, p. 703).

Social Sciences recently discovered the funny side of politics as a topic worthy of scientific attention and in the last years one can point to a growing interest in humour in a number of disciplines. The Special Issue ‘Humour and Global Politics’ in Global Society by Brassett, Browning and Wedderburn (2021) can be seen as a starting point for research on the use of humour on a more international level of politics. Only recently, the Special Issue ‘The politics and aesthetics of humour in an age of comic controversy’ by Nieuwenhuis and Zijp (2022)in the European Journal of Cultural Studies observed a ‘re-politicisation of humour’ in the 21^st century. Hence, our Special Issue builds on these ideas and focuses on (re-)politicization and the question of resistance to and legitimation of politics in society. It furthermore adds the interconnected and contradictory trends of absence of humour, as well its proliferation into new political environments like authoritarian contexts.

Humour has for a long time been associated with resistance and being a weapon of the weak (Fluri, 2019) and therefore, predominantly positive characteristics are ascribed to it (Billig, 2005). Following this tradition, humour has been seen as revolutionary and only in recent years has the focus shifted to an increasingly counter-revolutionary and conservative role of humour in parts due to its disincentivising (Brock, 2018) and camouflaging effects (Beck & Spencer, 2021; Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021). Especially in times of uncertainty, crisis and autocratization, shifts for the use of humour from entertaining to serious means and from censorship towards instrumentalized humour as style of politics become visible (Agerschou-Madsen & Malmvig, 2024). In this current seemingly inverted world, a reassessment is needed. Therefore, this Special Issue is especially interested in cases where humour is used against all odds or when common expectations are not met. While one might expect funny late-night hosts (Gherke, 2024), our volume shows serious entertainers and funny dictators instead. By looking on (un)funniness against all odds, the issue thereby contributes to the central tension between humour, critique and legitimacy.

Humour scholars have become increasingly interested in strategies involving satire and comedy which play a key role in the transformation of the public sphere and the self-representation of new authoritarian and populist politicians (Beck, 2024; Koivukoski et al., 2024). In recent years, it could be observed how humour is in democratic contexts a strategy of the powerful. Politicians often behave like entertainers who use humour to distract attention away from their own mistakes. In times of crisis, the role of comedians and funny politicians becomes highly ambivalent (Brasset & Browning, 2024; Spencer & Oppermann, 2024). While some comedians are more serious, others become political actors themselves and test and challenge the legal system. Here, the limits of humour and what the law can do against hate speech when humour is involved are of interest (Zinigrad, 2024).

The shifts observed in this special issue are ambiguous. Specific practices and forms of humour are intrinsic to political power, even in regimes where they are not expected. While authoritarian regimes have a limited tolerance against jokes on their own cost, there seems to be the trend that even authoritarian regimes use strategic humour for their means: Through blaming adversaries and spreading fake news (Chernobrov, 2021). The value of humour for liberal public culture and an ethical and moralistic outlook are of philosophical interest. At the same time, the rise of illiberal use of humour provokes a moralist critique of such tasteless humour. The changing landscape of humour in politics also includes the necessity of reflecting about ethics/ethical questions. A further shift concerns the role of humour in debates about what constitutes a human subject and who gets dehumanized. The quality of being humorous is highly desired and only ascribed to independent human subjects (Franck, 2022).

This introduction wants to set the stage for the rest of the special issue by providing an overview of some the key concepts, theories and approaches to humour. In part one, it considers the conceptions of humour and outlines some of the main theoretical approaches used in humour studies for the analysis of humour. This includes the question of what humour is, how it functions and what it does with an audience. Part two turns to the question of what humour does in politics. Here it considers a number of potential ‘effects’ which include the gaining and distracting of attention, the provoking of an opponent, isolating oneself from criticism, persuading an audience, managing anxiety in groups and establishing and destabilizing power hierarchies. Part three illustrates some of these effects, provides an overview of the research already conducted in IR on the role of humour in the resistance to and the legitimation of politics and shows how the contributions in this special issue add to the existing debate in the literature on the relationship between critique and legitimation of politics.

Concepts and Theories of Humour

The concept of humour is used very inconsistently in different disciplines from experts in humour studies to psychology, sociology, cultural and media studies to political science and IR. It is frequently ‘associated with, and differentiated from, other terms, such as the comic, irony, satire, ridicule, parody, mockery, scorn, funny, ludicrous, etc’. (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 3), but also from the muscular phenomenon commonly referred to as laughter (Dodds & Kirby, 2013, p. 51). While the word humour is often used as an umbrella term that covers all the related phenomena (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 3), we will define humour broadly as ‘everything that causes amusement, from a joke, story, play, skit, movie or book to a way of acting or a slogan in a demonstration’ (Sørensen, 2008, p. 170). Subsequently, political humour ‘is an umbrella term that encompasses any humorous text dealing with political issues, people, events, processes, or institutions’ (Kenski, Jamieson, & Young, 2014) which imply a normative and moral consideration of right and wrong behaviour.

Beginning in the 18th century, it was recognised that humour is not a property of objects but an attribution that can depend on various contextual conditions (Kindt, 2017, p. 4). What someone might see and interpret as funny is experienced differently by others. Since humour results from an action, it is individually made or discovered (Gernhardt, 1988, p. 10). In other words, humour is not a characteristic of a text and is dependent on many forms of context.

Superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity theory are the three most widely acknowledged theories for explaining humour (Morreall, 2009b), and with a long tradition in other mainly philosophical sciences, their different explanations for the emergence of humour are needed to introduce humour studies to politics. The most obvious theory for explaining humour in political science is superiority theory, which brings a manifest power component into the explanation of humour. In superiority theory, laughter and humour are seen as an articulation of supremacy (Kuipers, 2008, p. 367). People can feel triumphant because they are superior to others, which results in humour (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2004, p. 148). The long tradition of the explanation through superiority originates from Plato and Aristoteles (Dahl, 2021, p. 41). It is formulated by Thomas Hobbes’ in his Leviathan where laughter is seen as the result of a feeling of ‘sudden glory’ (Hobbes, 1651, p. 36). In other words, superiority means to withhold empathy, which can be compared to a ‘momentary anaesthesia of the heart’ (Bergson, 1914). Thus, it has a strong connection to ridicule.

Relief theory is connected to Sigmund Freud´s theorization of the unconscious, and describes humour as a way to physically release nervous tension (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2004, p. 147). Relief Theory focuses on laughter as being the channel of releasing aggravating emotions and ‘manifestation of the release of the nervous excitement or emotional tension’ (Bardon, 2005: 468). According to the theory laughter happens in uncomfortable, fearful, or shocking situations and when these situations are avoided (Gulas, Weinberger & Swani, 2017: 5). Laughing is here considered a coping mechanism for unpleasant occasions such as death, a broken heart or war.

Incongruity theory is the dominant humour theory in the literature as it covers a major degree of humour (Billig, 2005, p. 57; Holm, 2017; Kuipers, 2008; Morreall, 2009a), and many different versions and specifications of incongruity theory exist (Morreall, 2014). Incongruity theory deals with cognitive and affective reasons for humour (Morreall, 2009b, p. 248). It covers the typical and more general occurrences of humour (Kuipers, 2008, p. 369). Perceived incongruity leads to surprise, a feeling which provokes amusement. This matters because according to incongruity, humour plays with significations (Zijderveld, 1983, p. 6), often suggesting the opposite of what is meant. Instead of fulfilling certain patterns, humour has a surprising component and works on a cognitive level because people are amused by the deviation as a result of the violation of expectations (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2004, p. 148; Meyer, 2000, p. 314; Morreall, 2009a, pp. 248, 2009b, p. 248). It is the disturbance of the ‘expected pattern that provokes humour in the mind of the receiver’ (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2004, p. 148). Its understanding of funniness is based on the frames’ content, their coherence and the diversion between them. Humour is seen as an ‘aesthetic mode that calls upon the audience to entertain at least two conflicting frames simultaneously’ (Holm, 2017, p. 192). Without an adequate level of inter-frame coherence, the incongruity will be too large, meaning the humour will not be registered and the ‘joke’ will slide instead into the realm of the strange, the absurd (Holm, 2017, p. 192).

While relief and superiority theory are interested in what humour does, incongruity theory is interested in reason for why something is considered humorous. A common thread among most versions of these theories is to assume a sudden and rapid cognitive change resulting from incongruity or relief, also seen as a cognitive shift, that is enjoyable and thereby causes humour (Morreall, 2009b, p. 251).

Beyond the classical three theories of humour others have developed which are also helpful when considering role of humour in politics. For example, the sociologist Giselinde Kuipers, among others, has suggested a phenomenological theory or carnival theory of humour which is interested in explaining social functions of humour such as social control and social cohesion (Kuipers, 2008). In line with Bakhtin’s concept of carnival it describes humour as a unique form of communication that significantly diverges from conventional modes of expression and focuses on social functions (Kuipers, 2008) and the aspect of power (Bakhtin, 1984).

The notion of parody is also of relevance when considering humour in political science and IR especially considering the increasing role of late night shows in politics (Nieuwenhuis, 2018; Petry, 2020). Parody is commonly seen as a very vibrant form of political humour that is vital for political discussions. Parodies imitate the style of a well-known text by using exaggeration making certain aspects more evident. For politics news parodies seem particularly relevant as they fulfil a crucial function in political discourses as ‘news’ is assumed to have some natural kind of authority through its privileged access to institutions and knowledge. Research shows the importance of news parodies which are often preferred to conventional news by younger generations and engage their viewers (Baym & Jones, 2012; Leicht, 2023). They are well liked because of formats like the newspaper The Onion, which is well known and often positively associated (Holland & Levy, 2018). Other formats, such as The Daily Show, are so popular that it might be difficult to understand politics in America in the 21st century without them, since they generate a huge audience and highlight big political issues (Baym & Jones, 2012, p. 10).

One can explain parody ‘as the comic refunctioning of performed linguistic or artistic material’ (Rose, 2000, p. 52) because ‘parodic imitation works by turning an organic movement into something mechanical, and so reveals the mechanization underlying the original communicative act’ (Hariman, 2008, p. 250). Parody is inspired by an ‘original text’ which gets imitated by a ‘parodying text’ (Chatman, 2001, p. 28).

What Does Humour do in Politics?

Critics may be excused in asking: why is humour relevant for politics? Humour studies and existing research in political science and IR have pointed to several ‘effects’ that humour has on political debate. In the following we will highlight a number of these and indicate how this special issue contributed to each of the ‘effects’ which can be part of both humour usage as a means of critique or as a means of legitimation of power. This will include the notion of (1.) attention and distraction; (2.) provocation and isolation from critique; (3.) persuasion and anxiety management; (4.) establishment of hierarchies.

Attention and Distraction

On a very basic level, humour increases the level of attention given to an act of communication. In contrast to dry and technical elaborations of policy, humorous communication is easily accessible and has the potential of leading to larger audiences by being picked up, reported and retold in society (especially online) blurring the line between politics and entertainment (Brassett, 2021). Particularly the use of parody can transport political messages because of the intertextual knowledge of the audience. It can motivate other actors and platforms to replicate and share the memetic content. In the best case, people share and spoof the political messages after the publication of content and thereby cement the intended political message, even if it is meant as critique because the original text is always most prominently recognisable (Beck, 2022).

At the same time the use of humour can divert attention away from the political issue at hand to the humorous performance itself. Humour is in particular instrumentalised by state actors as ‘the audience is usually distracted from the important issues discussed’ (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 7).These problematics become visible in for examples Boris Johnson´s form of political communication in which humour is used to distract of attention from political issues (Beck, 2023). The staging of politics as a permanent entertaining spectacle can lead to problematic indifferences of the audience towards serious political issues.

Furthermore, humour camouflages certain issues, like violence, and proves to be a distraction from political conflicts by strategically leading attention away from central topics towards side topics and performances. Humour reduces the strain experienced by the audience when viewing exciting scenes. It can also help the audience to dismiss otherwise unsavoury aspects of a given production (Blackford et al., 2011, p. 123). Humour ‘has the potential to desensitize viewers to violent acts and add to the likability of advertisements’ (Blackford et al., 2011, p. 127). Critical issues are normalised by making things ‘laughable’ (Momen, 2019). Humour can be a means of camouflaging controversy as humour eases the transition for controversial political issues such as the use of violence into the everyday (Beck & Spencer, 2021). The serious impact of the issue can be neglected because the ‘cognitive disengagement’ of the audiences (Morreall, 2005) through amusement. Humour can sanitise problematic political issues as humour assists in disguising the effects and obfuscating the unfavourable features of the information that is being delivered (Beck & Spencer, 2021, p. 80). Scholars like Simon Weaver see a general ‘interaction between populism, incongruity and other humour and comedy tropes’ (Weaver, 2022, p. 12). ‘Populisms are frequently incongruous in structure and thus in need of rhetoric, and humorous rhetoric, as a method for negating the ambiguities, ambivalences and uncertainties that they produce’ (Beck, 2023; Weaver, 2022, p. 11).

Provocation and Isolation from Critique

Connected to the notion of attention and distraction is the idea of strategic provocation and the breaking of taboos when employing humour in politics. Humour is here employed as a means of critique of politics by highlighting and (over)emphasising political ‘failure’ in order to create an (over) reaction by those targeted by the humour. Humour here is a form of attack with the aim of creating controversy and thereby high amounts of attention. Often linked to this, we encounter the use of humour as a means of saying the unsayable and breaking of existing political taboos as humour expands the legitimate use of language in politics and enables a broader sphere of acceptable political communication through entertainment. The shift in the use of humour in public politics also leads to a shift in what is seen as legitimate. As humorous articulations are only really funny once or twice humour contributes to the acceleration of norm erosion as it needs to always provide something new and more taboo to achieve funniness. According to incongruity theory, people laugh about the discrepancy of two frames that do not fit together. However, when repeating it again and again, it does not seem incompatible anymore and is more accepted. To achieve humour again, the absurdity has to be exaggerated even further, the limits have to be enlarged (Holm, 2017, p. 198). This ‘expansion of postmodern humor’ (Holm, 2017, p. 198) can have drastic consequences like ‘a need to colonise new cultural and social ground as a function of its internal logic’ (Holm, 2017, pp. 198–199).

However, humour can also be uses as a ‘back door’ to get out of controversial situations in which provocation and taboo breaking resulted in a political back lash. Humour can provide a safety net as humour protects and isolates political actors from the critique of adversaries. Humour has the immanent mechanism of always providing an escape out of inconvenient situations, since both sides can call the serious meaning or content ‘a joke’ (Beck & Spencer, 2021, p. 79; Kuipers, 2008, p. 378). This holds for both criticism of power as well as verbal reactions by those in power as humour makes it harder to criticise messages that ambiguously move between threat and joke. Similarly, humour broadens the parameters of acceptable communication for the government, making it much harder to criticise the message when it was not supposed to be taken seriously in the first place (Beck & Spencer, 2022).

Persuasion and Anxiety Management

Apart from gaining attention and provoking the use of humour in politics is meant to persuade an audience through the creation of closeness. Humour ‘allows politicians and/or media people to promote specific standpoints and values and to persuade the audience of the “reasonableness” of political acts’ (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 7). This happens by making the person or institution appear likeable. Humour is seen as a central element of political charisma as the person is perceived as authentic and very approachable. Humour is key to the interaction between groups and individuals. It is seen as legitimate and is always present in social life because the ambiguity resulting from the subjective discovering ‘makes it well-suited to negotiations and manipulations of selves and relationships’ (Kuipers, 2008, p. 377). The affective and cognitive effects of humour, like its enjoyment and emotional responses, can lead to ‘a form of play’ (Morreall, 2009a, p. 253) that has consequences because of the mechanism of suspension of ‘practical and noetic concern to simply enjoy what they are doing in a nonserious way’, called playing (Morreall, 2009a, p. 253). By allowing messages to enter another’s mind and removing cognitive obstacles (Kayam et al., 2014, p. 7), humorous messages achieve a persuasion that is not possible with more traditional ways of political messaging. The cognitive effect of the detection of humour can further interrupt the critical processing of arguments by the audience (Cline & Kellaris, 1999), making critical reflection much more difficult. These effects are highly relevant for political communication as humour in politics is supposed to persuade a public of the righteousness of a particular decision, policy or idea. Humour is a promising means of gaining the support of the general public for ideas, actors and initiatives (Purcell, Brown, & Gokmen, 2010, p. 374) in, for example, parliamentary debates, press conferences and election campaigns (Beck, 2023, p. 14; Meyer, 2000, p. 322).

Recently right wing actors and populists have discovered humour and especially humorous memes have become over the years a popular way to convince people on social media through funny text–image combinations (Brock, 2018, p. 289). Brantner et al. (2019) ’show in detail how humor is instrumentalized and functionalized for political persuasion in the context of right-wing populism’. For populists, humour works to ‘amplify the reach, potential impact, and attention’ (Wagner & Schwarzenegger, 2020).

Linked to the notion of persuasion is the idea of using humour as a means of anxiety management. Very much in line with relief theory the idea is that humour can be used to persuade the self of the stability of ontological structures. Humour can play a role in providing a sense of levity and comfort in uncertain or stressful situations (Ochkhikidze et al., 2024). It can help individuals to cope with feelings of insecurity and anxiety and can promote social bonding and a sense of shared experience. This can contribute to a sense of stability and security in your own sense of self and the world around you (Giddens, 1991; Gülseven, 2020). A stable self-identity does not automatically exist, but ‘has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 52) in order to create a stable self-identity often referred to as ontological security (Browning & Joenniemi, 2017; Steele, 2008). Especially in crisis-ridden times, stable narratives are needed to provide relief for states and citizens and humour plays a key role in this respect. Research has dealt with various strategies of anxiety management and possible linkages to humour. Actors often try to provide ontological security by constructing autobiographical narratives of a shared past, present and future of the community (Beck, 2022; Subotić, 2015). However, in this context, many political attempts to use humour for anxiety management in European politics have led to unsatisfying outcomes (Brassett, Browning, & O'Dwyer, 2021).

(De-) Establishment of Hierarchies

Beyond the points mentioned above humour in politics can both contribute to the establishment and reduction of hierarchies. A number of scholars have pointed out that humour can be a means of addressing power asymmetries. As mentioned above, through its emotional effects humour provides a means of closeness and a bond of intimacy created through laughter (Kopper, 2021). Others have pointed to the theoretical concept of carnival by Mikhail Bakhtin. In Bakhtin’s understanding of carnival, humour forms a ritualised and alternative sphere to the official, serious everyday world by putting structures upside down (Bakhtin, 1984). The carnivalesque ‘seeks to overturn the hierarchies of the status quo through humorous attacks on elites, breaking down barriers, norms, prohibitions and etiquette, and by creating an atmosphere in which all demand equal dialogic status’ (MacMillan, 2020, p. 59). For Bakhtin, the medieval carnival ‘was a temporary suspension of the entire official system with all its prohibitions and hierarchic barriers’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 89). Because of the suspension of hierarchies, a social space separate from official life is established without inequalities (Bakhtin, 1984).

At the same time humour can be employed in order to strengthen established power hierarchies. Research shows how humour as popular culture reinforces and reflects the dominant order (Billig, 2005; Tsakona & Popa, 2011). Humour is always embedded into social hierarchies (Billig, 2005) and it reflects and influences power structures. Furthermore, there is the aspect of exercising power through inclusion/exclusion and the question of who gets to joke, about what and whom (Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021, p. 2). In line with superiority theory, humour is here used to laugh at the weak and thereby provide a feeling of superiority over others (Billig, 2005). The fear of becoming a target of ridicule leads to behaviour that meets society’s expectations. Therefore, ridicule ensures and provides stability through a protection of practices. It can preserve the social order, which makes humour an adequate tool for the powerful (Kuipers, 2011) as ridicule can have stabilizing effects for political regimes. It helps to preserve the status quo instead of stimulating change. Ridicule can be part of a repetitive use of seemingly innocent and funny stereotypes, as is the case in racism or antisemitism. Further examples are gender humour and racist, anti-Muslim and antisemitic jokes, as they are all ensuring the stability of social inclusion/exclusion. Critical scholars, therefore, see humour as ‘counter-revolutionary’ (Romanos & Ungureanu, 2019) in the public sphere and as a ‘recycling of stereotypes’ (Tsakona & Popa, 2011).

Humour in Politics and IR: Critique & Legitimation of Power

The general interest of IR scholars in humour began to some degree with the Danish Muhammad Cartoon controversy in 2006 (Kuipers, 2011, p. 64) in which questions of identity, anxiety, norms and security became visible to others. In this so-called ‘first international humour scandal’ (Hansen, 2011), Muslims felt ridiculed by Danish Muhammad cartoons, which sparked an international scandal. The observable tension between unserious modes of communication and serious aims and consequences is the reason for making humour so interesting and the linkages to visuality become quite clear. These scandals around the cartoons showed the linkage between humour and conflict (Nieuwenhuis & Zijp, 2022) and ‘how humour functions as a “tool” giving impetus to various forms of geopolitical processes and discussions in a range of contextual circumstances and at different spatial levels, resulting in both politically affirmative and destructive effects’ (Ridanpää, 2009, p. 729). And the research field has become aware that humour is not always ‘an intrinsically positive dimension of social life’ (Lockyer & Pickering, 2008, p. 814).

This special issue is interested in the positive and negative interplay of humour and politics and how humour is both a means of critique and legitimation of power. For many years the analysis of humour in politics focused on the role of humour as a means of critique of the status quo and as a form of resistance to and challenge of those in positions of power. Research here showed how humour includes the ability to question dominant discourses like hegemonic narratives (Ridanpää, 2014a, p. 704). Humour was considered to provide alternative methods of discussing certain issues and was often associated with resistance (Greene & Gournelos, 2011). This positive role and perception of humour is visible in and connected to the framing of social protests (Hart, 2007). Research considered humour in politics was predominantly as a means for subversive critique or protest. In totalitarian societies, humour can serve as an alternative means of communication when traditional channels are controlled by the regime due to this ambiguity (Sørensen, 2008). Activists benefit from the agility that humour enables: If authorities act repressively, protesters can claim that they were just joking, but the criticism is still voiced (Sørensen, 2017, p. 149). The ability to critique governments and other institutions through media, such as movies and television, has grown significantly through entertaining visual content (Momen, 2019, p. XVIII). Scholars see a big potential for jokes to act as both emancipatory phenomena and coping mechanisms (Beck & Spencer, 2021, p. 67; Ridanpää, 2014b, p. 453). Pranks and stunts are, for example, effective tools for activists to use humour as humour contains the potential to reframe events (Dodds & Kirby, 2013, p. 57). In this regard, Charlotte Gherke (2024) in her contribution to this special issue shows that humour as a tool of critique in late-night talk shows has fundamentally changed over time. While the number of late-night shows has greatly increased, the way the shows address tragic events such as natural catastrophes or school shootings indicates a move towards seriousness and civic responsibility, subverting traditional expectations by incorporating political accountability and advocacy rather than humour.

Research also considers humour as a social experience and as a powerful boundary-making tool because it supports the construction of different group identities (Dodds & Kirby, 2013, p. 55) as humour is a product of specific social groups and their preferences. The main topics of such studies not only include social marginalisation and group cohesion and their use for political satire but also their use as a political tool that refers to humour as a strategy and a method to advance individual political interests (Beck & Spencer, 2021, p. 67; Ridanpää, 2014a). Connected to this Joonas Koivukoski, Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, Janne Zareff and Aleksi Knuutila (2024) examine how different humour styles are used in Finish politics to legitimize or delegitimize political actors, finding that the Finns Party candidates employed aggressive humour the most to undermine opponents. The article explores the strategic use of various humour styles in gaining political attention and their broader implications in political communication.

Especially after 9/11, political humour became a prominent way of challenging the dominant narrative of good versus evil and the expanded powers of the state (Greene & Gournelos, 2011, p. XI). The role of political humour in public life became vibrant. The subversive potential became visible in prominent counternarratives against the dominant representations of the ‘War on Terror’, and humour produced by journalists, TV shows and activists increased as a voice of dissent received more scientific attention (Greene & Gournelos, 2011, p. 11; Momen, 2019, p. XVIII). There was an increasing awareness that humour can contribute also to the distribution of harmful messages and is playing a central role in the spread of hate crime (Billing, 2001). This has raised a number of important questions, including the issue of humour and freedom of speech and its limits. In this issue Roman Zinigrad (2024), using the case of Dieudonne, a French antisemitic comedian, shows how counts have not taken into consideration the power of humour to increase the dissemination of hate in free speech litigations in court. He argues that this power of humour to boost a hateful message must be taken into consideration in the decision on the limits of free speech.

While research on humour was at first predominantly interested in the role of humour as a form of critique of the more powerful, research has since moved on to investigating the use of humour by the state as a means of creating and enhancing its own legitimacy. There is a realisation that [[r]ather than provoking social and political change, political humour conveys criticism against the political status quo and recycles and reinforces dominant values and views on politics’ (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 1). This is due to the fact that most humour is consumed through some kind of public media, which is generally not supporting any subversive tendencies or political changes since, in contrast, the media´s “role in maintaining and reinforcing mainstream dominant values is crucial” (Tsakona & Popa, 2011, p. 7). The power of humour is thereby often one of reaffirmation and solidification of the social status quo.

State actors have realised the political potential of comedy and humour as a central instrument in politics (Holm, 2017). Research in IR has been interested in the states use of humour at the intersection with diplomacy (Adler-Nissen & Tsinovoi, 2019; Manor, 2021); anxiety and ontological security (Brassett, Browning, & O'Dwyer, 2021); populism (Weaver, 2022); and journalism (Chernobrov, 2021). The key idea here is that humour reflects and creates power structures (Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021), which are crucial for (state) actors as a means of legitimation of politics (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2021). Humour is increasingly used by state actors to enhance attention and legitimacy (Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021, p. 3) and recently Nieuwenhuis and Zijp (2022) observed a ‘re-politicisation of humour’ in the 21st century. Alexander Spencer´s and Kai Oppermann’s (2024) article in this special issue explores the role of humor in managing foreign policy failures by state actors, drawing insights from policy failure, customer service management, and crisis communication. They refer to humour used by US presidents at the White House Correspondents Dinners and argue that humor can help mitigate damage to the actor responsible for the failure, but it is effective only with a sympathetic audience, as it helps reconcile the cognitive tension between supporting a policy and acknowledging its failure.

In current legitimation processes, humour and comedy can play a crucial role in the way that certain identities and acts are claimed as legitimate and in the way that they are rejected, challenged and contested, (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2021, p. 273). The focus here lies on state communication and the notion of ‘strategic humour’ (Chernobrov, 2021) which employs humour purposely for legitimation and authentic self-representation (Beck & Spencer, 2021; Chernobrov, 2021), for ‘cooler identities’ (Malmvig, 2022, p. 5) or for ‘multilayered messages’ of ‘constructive ambiguity’ (Kopper, 2021). An interesting case study on the use of humour in public diplomacy is the Russian state’s claims to legitimacy ‘through a blurring of news reporting and comedy’ by means of its state sponsored RT (formerly known as Russia Today; (Crilley & Chatterje-Doody, 2021). RT engages with international audiences, as its content is available in different languages and uses humour to spread false information to audiences inside and outside of Russia while aiming to create a positive view of Russia. Daniel Beck (2024) in this issue picks up the use of humour on Russia and argues in his article that the use of the grotesque and ridiculous can contribute to state power through indifference towards excessive behaviour and truthfulness. Building on insights from Mbembe and Foucault he examines media representations of Vladimir Putin to hold hat the grotesqueness of such imagery often in the form of memes is an essential part of structures of domination and authoritarian rule.

A second example of a state’s use of humour for increasing legitimacy is Israel, where recognition was the aim of a media campaign strategically employing humour. The campaign ‘Presenting Israel’ in 2010 used parodying video clips and thereby ‘mobilised ordinary Israeli citizens to engage in peer-to-peer public diplomacy when travelling abroad’ (Adler-Nissen & Tsinovoi, 2019, p. 3). A similar process in visible in the article by Fannie Agerschou-Madsen and Helle Malmvig (2024) which examines how Saudi Arabia, as an authoritarian state, appropriates and co-opts humour and fun through music festivals and stand-up comedy as a means of strategic identity construction and as a source of legitimacy. The article shows how critique and legitimation of power occupy the same ‘space of fun’ and simultaneously serve as forms of resistance against and as a means for authoritarian regimes to rule over the population.

The claim to legitimacy by state actors is made by using ‘the everyday language of comedy to shape and direct the interest, attention and concern of their (media literate) publics’ (Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021, p. 3). This has led to scholars considering humour as a form of communication in public diplomacy (Manor, 2021) or new diplomacy (Brassett, Browning, & Wedderburn, 2021), in which humour is used to influence mainly foreign but also domestic audiences (Manor, 2023). As already argued in 2018 by Brasset and Browning in a blogpost dealing with the rise of humour, a growing use of humour is applied by politicians in contemporary public communication to make content attractive as well as deceptive (Brasset & Browning, 2018). James Brassett and Chris Browning (2024) pick up once more this ambiguous role of humour in politics in their contribution which has without doubt the funniest title in this special issue and brings together the notion of humour with ontological security. By examining memes and cartoons about politicians such as Liz Truss they argue that while humour and ridicule of politicians, especially in Britain, is considered to commonly challenge the status quo, we need to consider the disciplinary power of humour and its social function of creating a sense of comfort. Thereby humorous engagement can potentially subdue the felt need of challenging politics more directly.

Through these divers contributions in the special issue on the changing role of humour in politics, we hope to have emphasised the need for more engagement with the ‘dark’ sides of humour. It wanted to emphasise that humour is not only a means of critique and challenging the status quo, but also a strategy used by politicians and states to legitimise (authoritarian) rule. Typical for two German academics (McPherson, 2022) we wanted to show the contradictory unfunny side of humour.