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Abstract

Thematic textual analysis was used to evaluate the calls for financial participation and donations that aired during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic across 55 episodes of Seasons 7 and 8 of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on HBO (February 2020–November 2021). The findings suggest that Oliver offers a new way for viewers to engage in low-cost political activism that capitalizes on their pre-existing civic skills and resources. With few barriers to participation, Oliver’s fundraising efforts and calls for donations among individuals, corporations, and even on behalf of the show itself allow for engagement across a range of domestic and international political issues, energizing not only his fan base but also simultaneously reasserting his credibility as a trusted information source who is adept at spotlighting issues central to political life and public culture. While calling for participation and protest is part of Oliver’s comic brand, he is also encouraging genuine financial engagement within the public sphere.

Keywords

satire money participation John Oliver

Since the early days of Jon Stewart’s tenure as host of The Daily Show (1999–2015), there has been abundant scholarly interest in understanding the behavioral and political outcomes of exposure to political satire content. Decades of research have documented the effect of satire exposure on viewers’ attitudes and opinions, knowledge and learning, and efficacy and engagement (Baumgartner & Morris, 2006; Becker & Waisanen, 2013; LaMarre et al., 2009). One of the most pressing questions posed by scholars—which also has clear normative implications—is whether exposure to political satire content can engender greater political participation among these media-consuming citizens who might otherwise remain disengaged from the political process (Baumgartner & Lockerbie, 2018; Becker, 2021; Hart & Hartelius, 2007; Hoffman & Young, 2011).

Collectively, previous research shows that while satire exposure does not translate into increased voter turnout or directly impact vote choice, it can impact the likelihood of voting on Election Day and voter confidence in candidates (Baumgartner & Lockerbie, 2018; Baumgartner et al., 2012; Pease & Brewer, 2008). Moreover, exposure to political satire can encourage smaller, “easier” acts of political and civic participation and public expression like signing a petition, commenting online, or attending a protest (Becker, 2013; Bode & Becker, 2018). For those without a fixed viewpoint on complicated political issues, exposure to political satire content can encourage the formation of new issue opinions (Becker, 2022b; Brewer et al., 2018; Hardy et al., 2014). Importantly, the type of political comedy matters, with political satire from comedians like Trevor Noah and John Oliver having a greater impact on civic and political engagement than exposure to traditional network late-night comedy broadcasts from hosts like Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel (Hoffman & Young, 2011).

While research has consistently documented political satire’s calls to action with respect to voting and other political behaviors, what happens when the call for participation does not seek engagement that involves time or civic skills, but instead focuses on donating money, particularly in smaller, more accessible amounts? (Zukin et al., 2006). Before empirically testing whether exposure to political satire content that includes calls for donations impacts political behavior, it is important to first document the increase in calls for financial contributions on political satire programming.

Privileging a thematic textual analysis approach, the research offers a critical assessment of the calls for donations and fundraising efforts that aired across 55 episodes from Seasons 7 and 8 of Last Week Tonight (hereafter, LWT) with John Oliver on HBO between February 2020 and November 2021. Focusing on calls for donations and engagement among individuals, corporations, and even John Oliver’s own attempts to contribute financially on behalf of the show via HBO, the study documents the rise in requests for money that complement long-standing calls for participation and recruitment with respect to time and civic skills like signing a petition, protesting, or boycotting behaviors (Verba et al., 1995). Taken together, these calls for citizen financial contributions capitalize on the already high levels of political engagement of LWT viewers (e.g., individuals with greater levels of political interest and efficacy are more likely to watch political satire), and the resources (e.g., time, money, civic skills) of corporations to encourage a new mode of engagement, allowing all to put their money where their mouths are and take action to support the political causes central to the mission of the show (Young, 2020).

As the research shows, Oliver’s fundraising efforts not only allow for engagement across a range of national and international political issues, but the barriers to entry and participation are minimal, given the small amount of the requested donations for viewers and the return on investment that often comes in the form of a unique piece of show paraphernalia sent to dedicated fans who then feel like an even greater part of the LWT imagined community (Marwick & boyd, 2011). Moreover, the media attention that surrounds each new call to donate not only amplifies Oliver’s message and engages corporations via social media, but reasserts Oliver’s credibility as a muckraking satirist who has the ability to compel fans, companies, and even HBO to use their economic power to engage in small yet meaningful demonstrations of political activism (Harvey, 2017). As the research will document, Oliver’s combined fundraising efforts and calls for donations across Seasons 7 and 8 of LWT raised more than 5 million dollars for domestic and international causes.

Notably, Oliver’s ability to spotlight and draw attention to key issues in an engaging, informative, and yet performative way sets him apart from other comedians (Gamson, 1994; Waisanen & Becker, 2020). While it is sometimes hard to separate Oliver’s satirical performance from his calls to action as they are clearly part of his shtick, his impact on engagement and key issue debates is real and measurable (Freelon et al., 2016; Meyerowitz, 1985). Before reviewing Oliver’s calls to donate and participate across 55 episodes from Seasons 7 and 8 of LWT, it is first important to provide some context about the show and Oliver’s unique position within the political satire landscape.

John Oliver: The Comic Recruiter

In many respects, Oliver’s LWT presents a version of televised political satire programming that is unique and distinctive when compared against other offerings like The Daily Show or Full Frontal (Becker, 2022a; Michaud Wild, 2019). Oliver and his team of researchers and journalists offer up a well-sourced, highly informative, in-depth expose on a timely issue each week, taking advantage of the affordances of premium cable television (Fox, 2018). Modern day muckraking at its finest, LWT segments are long, rich in factual detail, and evaluated as credible by viewers, politicians, and other media outlets (Becker & Bode, 2018). Oliver manages to spotlight issues and showcase the expertise of his research and writing staff, all the while intermixing language and content that would not be as frequently permissible on broadcast television (Becker, 2022b; Harvey, 2017). Oliver is simultaneously an antagonist, an investigative reporter, and a comic recruiter, motivating viewers to participate in troll-like activism or satiric advocacy with regular direct calls to action (Brewer et al., 2018; Davisson & Donovan, 2019; Waisanen, 2018).

Importantly, prior work on the impact of LWT has documented this unique brand of activism with respect to the issue of net neutrality. Previous research has shown that Oliver not only drove enough citizen traffic to the FCC website to shut it down, but in the process, encouraged greater participation among women, expanding the demographic sphere of engagement on the issue (Freelon et al., 2016). In a related vein, research has shown that Oliver’s segment on the issue prompted viewers to engage in easier political behaviors like signing a petition or commenting online and encouraged viewers to form an opinion on the issue, discounting competing media coverage from sources like Fox News (Bode & Becker, 2018; Brewer et al., 2018). In fact, research has even shown that Oliver’s segments on net neutrality were as effective as traditional news content with respect to knowledge gain and learning (Becker & Bode, 2018).

Notably, Oliver has taken on corporations and media personalities, encouraging the boycotting of both brands and programs (e.g., POM juice; Tucker Carlson, NRA TV) (Friedersdorf, 2019; Griner, 2014; Gross, 2018). As host, he has called on corporations to be more cognizant of and responsible for their corporate connections (e.g., AT&T) and treat their workers fairly (e.g., Amazon) (Evans, 2019; Nordyke, 2021).

Oliver has also focused on rising health care costs and medical debt. Often juxtaposed against the in-studio tactics of Oprah Winfrey, Oliver is credited with “what may be the largest giveaway in TV history” (Michaud Wild, 2019, p. 349; Pease & Brewer, 2008). In 2016, Oliver created a company named Central Asset Recovery Professionals, or “CARP, after the bottom-feeding fish” to buy up medical debt, transferring the balance to a nonprofit to forgive the expired medical debt for nearly 9,000 Americans (Michaud Wild, 2019, p. 350).

A well-known champion of LGBT rights, Oliver engaged in activism that simultaneously attacked former Vice President Mike Pence for his support of conversion therapy and raised money for pro-LGBT organizations. Mocking Charlotte Pence’s picture book in March 2018, Oliver and his staff released their own “better version of the bunny book” (Davisson & Donovan, 2019). The Oliver parody book engaged in metanoic advocacy by prominently displaying and celebrating the marriage of Marlon Bundo to another male bunny named Wesley (Waisanen & Becker, 2020). The Oliver book quickly outsold the original Pence text, landing at the top of the Amazon best-seller list. The accompanying audiobook featured celebrity readers including Jim Parsons, Jessie Tyler Ferguson, and RuPaul (Davisson & Donovan, 2019). Other celebrities promoted the book including Ellen DeGeneres, donating $10,000 in Oliver’s name to the Trevor Project, while Max Mutchnik, the creator of Will and Grace, donated a copy of the Oliver book to every elementary school in Indiana as an act of protest against Pence (Waisanen & Becker, 2020). Not only did the book provide a laugh at Pence’s expense, but it offered fans a relatively inexpensive way to donate to pro-LGBT causes. In the process, viewers were able to affordably acquire a piece of fan paraphernalia, further fueling the show’s pro-LGBT activism in a satirically engaging yet antagonistic way.

John Oliver and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Oliver’s interest in inserting periodic calls to action that promote engagement with social justice issues into his broadcasts seemed amplified at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Troubled with how to put on a comedy show in a time of crisis, Oliver laid out his thoughts about broadcasting during the pandemic in a February 2021 interview:

The thing that’s really affecting it is watching the death count go up, and you start to think, “Well, hold on, what can you do as the death count is climbing? What can you do, and what feels remotely appropriate? . . .”

I thought we can do twenty-some-odd minutes about the mishandling of a pandemic and the rising death count.

Then we can just about logically turn into, ‘You’re probably running out of things to watch right now. Here’s something that we could watch together,’ and just view weird clips . . . On top of that, it felt like, if we set this up right, we can almost money launder HBO’s production budget to food banks, which actually feels like the most responsible thing to possibly do right now. (Ramos, 2021, para 14–17)

Oliver was not alone in his need to adapt his broadcast, given the challenges of COVID-19. For the first time, late-night comedians were forced to broadcast from home without live in-studio audiences. Interviews with guests were conducted remotely and even the most entertainment-oriented shows focused on providing serious, informative content related to the pandemic, engaging in public service in an effort to stem the rising tide of COVID-related misinformation (Becker, 2022c; Steinberg, 2020).

LWT was an integral part of this comedic response to the pandemic. In Season 7 alone, Oliver aired segments Coronavirus I-IX across nine different weekly broadcasts between March and June 2020 which dealt with various aspects of the pandemic including evictions and the plight of essential workers (HBO, 2021). In addition to these nine labeled segments, Oliver focused on future pandemics, conspiracy theories, and the response of the Trump administration in additional broadcasts (HBO, 2021). Known for focusing on a different topic with each new episode prior to the pandemic, Oliver’s intense scrutiny and focus on COVID-19 across multiple episodes is evidence of his desire to both provide shared comic relief and simultaneously educate, enrage, and activate his viewers (Ramos, 2021).

What Exactly is a Call to Action?

Generally speaking, a call to action involves recruitment from a respected spokesperson (e.g., a community organizer, a clergyperson, or lay leader) or a direct call to participation from a political party or issue advocacy group (Verba et al., 1995). These calls to action tap into citizen potential to use their resources (e.g., time, money, and civic skills) to capitalize on their pre-existing comfort with political engagement (e.g., higher levels of political interest or efficacy; civic values or commitment to party) in response to a direct call for participation either at the ballot box or through other expressions of public voice (Verba et al., 1995; Zukin et al., 2006). While some calls to action require more concentrated participation, in today’s networked political age, many are intentionally designed to be easy acts that citizens can complete quickly (Penney, 2015).

In today’s post-hybrid media environment, calls to action can also come from high-profile celebrities, social media influencers, and political satirists (Marshall, 2014). While research has focused primarily on calls to register and get out the vote (GOTV) and the influence of celebrity endorsements on candidate choice (Austin et al., 2008; Garthwaite & Moore, 2013; Jackson & Darrow, 2005), it is important to pay careful attention to other participatory behaviors—like donating a small amount of money or fundraising for a good cause—that are also “easy” for certain citizens and groups alike, particularly for those with resources and higher levels of preexisting engagement with politics.

While donating money certainly can bring concerns about barriers to entry and participation, Oliver’s calls for individual action focus on small amounts (generally under $20) that often result in receiving a piece of fan paraphernalia in return. Reflective of a more grassroots-level style of engagement in political life, these individual-level donations are akin to the choices one makes as an engaged political consumer, choosing to boycott a brand that supports conflicting political values or choosing to buy from a company that expresses aligned values (Becker & Copeland, 2016; Copeland, 2014; Copeland & Becker, 2019). Furthermore, given the demographics of the LWT audience, these small financial acts are generally easily accessible. As national recent political campaigns have shown, small grassroots-level donations can have a marked impact on engagement (Scammell, 2014). Furthermore, as the analysis will show, the calls for contributions from corporations or from the HBO budget on behalf of the show itself are also comparably small, especially relative to their social media impact.

Methods

Unlike other qualitative research efforts that focus on a single episode or small subset of episodes, the research considers the text of all 55 episodes that aired during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic across two LWT seasons. Season 7 of LWT began on February 16, 2020, and concluded with Episode 30 on November 15, 2020; Season 8 began on February 14, 2021 and concluded with Episode 30 on November 14, 2021. While each episode is available in its entirety via a paid subscription to HBO, the main segment from each episode (generally 20+ min of a 30- to 35-min episode) and additional web content is made available for free on YouTube. The COVID-19 pandemic dominated both Seasons 7 and 8 of LWT; Oliver began broadcasting from “the void” or his home studio on March 15, 2020, for Episode 5 of Season 7, and did not return to the studio until Episode 23 of Season 8 on September 12, 2021. For analysis purposes, the 55 episodes from Seasons 7 and 8 that aired during the height of the pandemic (March 15, 2020–November 14, 2021) were reviewed along with any additional “web exclusives” uploaded to YouTube.

Thematic textual analysis was used to gain an understanding of the ways that LWT incorporated calls for fundraising during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic across this 55-episode corpus. Most prevalent in the field of cultural studies (Hall, 1992; Kellner, 2001), thematic textual analysis allows researchers to interpret the significance and impact of a particular historical event or cultural moment, going beyond the actual text itself to infer deeper meaning (Jiang, 2013; Poniatowski & Hardin, 2012). Building upon recent political comedy and satire scholarship that has taken a more qualitative and thematic approach (Becker, 2021; Becker, 2022c; Davisson & Donovan, 2019; Michaud Wild, 2019), the relevant content from Seasons 7 and 8 was reviewed multiple times via HBO, YouTube, and in attendant press coverage to develop and map out an organizing framework.

Results

The textual analysis revealed three important fundraising targets within the show content: (1) individual citizens, (2) corporations, and (3) HBO (on behalf of Oliver and LWT), which serve as the organizing framework for the analysis. After careful consideration, it was decided to organize the results and review content chronologically across each relevant fundraising target.

LWT and Calls for Individual-Level Engagement

From the start of the pandemic through to the end of Season 8 in November 2021, Oliver periodically took a segment of his broadcast to speak directly to viewers as individuals, offering reassurance, satirical criticism of politicians and policy, and asked them to think about a small donation that they could give in an effort be part of the solution.

At the conclusion of his first broadcast from “the void,” in his “COVID II” segment on March 15, 2020, John Oliver not only implored viewers to get a flu shot but also suggested that:

Going forward we’re going to need to look out for one another and not just in terms of containing the transmission of this virus but also in terms of the economic impact that this is going to have on people who may well not be able to weather it . . . One small way you can help is by donating financially to your local food bank. There is a directory of those at FeedingAmerica.org . . . Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and we will be back in some form, sometime in the future and until then, stay safe and good night. (LastWeekTonight, 2020a)

Oliver returns to the air from “the void” 2 weeks later on March 29, 2020, to report more on the pandemic with his Coronavirus III segment. Additional segments on COVID-19 follow in subsequent episodes (Coronavirus IV, V, and VI dominate his April and early May 2020 broadcasts).

On May 10, 2020, in Episode 11 of Season 7, Oliver shifts his focus to talk about the United States Postal Service (USPS) with an in-depth look at their constrained financial situation and how much added volume they have had to handle since the start of the pandemic. At the end of the segment, Oliver offers viewers an easy way to help support the USPS, adding revenue to the federal agency’s bottom line with the purchase of custom LWT postage stamps that feature key characters from the show. In true satirical fashion, Oliver suggests that buying the stamps over the course of the month reflects:

. . . the perfect way to mail a card that supports the USPS in its time of need while also saying I like Last Week Tonight . . . If you liked this segment buy a stamp and support the Postal Service. If you hated it buy one anyway and mail me a letter about how much I suck. It’s all the same to them and you’d be doing a really nice thing. (LastWeekTonight, 2020c)

An individual sheet of stamps cost $14.00; stamps were available online at Stamps.com for a limited time. For dedicated viewers, the donation amount was considerably small, and the online ordering made it easy to act in solidarity with Oliver. According to reporting in July 2020, Oliver’s special stamp run raised more than 4 million dollars for the USPS and resulted in a donation of more than $475,000 to the Postal Employees Relief Fund, a charitable organization that helps postal workers impacted by natural disasters (“Stamps.com Generates Sales of Over $4 Million in Last Week Tonight Custom Postage Stamps in supporrt of the USPS,” 2020).

Again asking viewers to donate a small sum of money to promote a cause in connection with the show, on June 27, 2021 (Season 8, Episode 17), Oliver transformed his 2015 fake church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, into a health care sharing ministry—Our Lady of Perpetual Health (Welsh, 2021). Advertising the health care sharing ministry with the help of Rachel Dratch in character as Wanda Jo Oliver, John’s “Mega Wife,” Dratch offers praise for Florida, “that blessed state where minimally regulated insurance knock-offs go to be born” (LastWeekTonight, 2021b). As Oliver notes, according to regulations, “we do need to fulfill the requirement that our ministry provide for the financial or medical needs of a participant through contributions of other participants” (LastWeekTonight, 2021b). The result is the “Johnnycare first aid kit, containing not one, not two, but three Band-Aids. It screams ‘the cheapest option we could find,’” (LastWeekTonight, 2021b).

Viewers are instructed to go to freedomfromhealthcare.org “and see if you qualify to send us money and get almost nothing in return” (LastWeekTonight, 2021b). With the help of Dratch, Oliver is simultaneously pointing out the absurdity of health care sharing ministries with a satirical critique, but also asking viewers to engage in a small act of financial participation to indicate their dissatisfaction with the current US health care system. By getting viewers to engage in the scheme, Oliver offers them an easy, low-cost opportunity to participate in the health care debate (Ivie, 2021).

Leaving “the void” to return to the studio for his first broadcast since the pandemic began on September 12, 2021 (Season 8, Episode 23), Oliver focuses on foreign policy, devoting more than 18 min of the broadcast toward discussing the situation in Belarus and the corrupt Lukashenko government. Encouraging support for reform efforts, Oliver presents viewers with:

. . . an extremely small way that we can actually help here or if not help at least annoy the shit out of Lukashenko . . . So, we actually decided to make our own special teddy bear in his honor . . . and instead of dropping them from a plane over Belarus, we’re actually offering them to you at this website (Belarusbearforce.com) for the price of $19.99. We’ve partnered with Global Giving to give 100% of sales to organizations fighting for the freedom of the press and human rights for the people of Belarus. So please, buy one of these bears and not just for the people of Belarus but for my sake too. We bought 10,000 of these things and if we don’t get rid of all of them, I’m in real shit. (LastWeekTonight, 2021d)

In true LWT fashion, viewers responded and quickly purchased the 10,000 bears. Less than 24 hr later, a tweet from LWT notes: “We are all out of bears! Thank you to everyone who bought one! If you’d still like to donate to help the people of Belarus, you can give to the GlobalGiving fund here” with a link to donate to the organization (LastWeekTonight[@LastWeekTonight, 2021). With the stuffed bear campaign, Oliver not only educated viewers on the situation in Belarus, a country that appears infrequently on the media agenda, but he yet again presented a small way to engage financially in support of a cause that is important to the show.

Using LWT to Engage with Corporations

While Oliver is often quick to engage audience members at the individual level, he also creates video content to antagonize recognizable corporations. Much of this content comes in the form of video content uploaded straight to YouTube and shared on social media to generate engagement outside of the normal HBO broadcast cycle.

After the close of Season 7, Oliver went straight to YouTube on December 6, 2020 to share an update on a joke about the bottom half of the Pringles mascot. Oliver’s earlier joke about what the Pringles guy might “look like from the neck down,” engaged fans on Twitter as they shared their own drawings of what the full-bodied Pringles mascot might look like in real life (LastWeekTonight, 2020b).

Dismayed by Pringles’ lack of a social media response, Oliver pushes the chip company to answer the pressing question as to which of the shared drawings made by fans are “canon,” providing viewers with an actual answer as to what the Pringles mascot (e.g., Julius Pringles) really looks like from the neck down. Oliver argues:

“What is Julius Pringles working with from the neck down?” Do I need to know this? No, I don’t. Do I want to know this? Yes, very badly. So much so that I’m willing to give $10,000 to Feeding America if Pringles answers my question . . .The ball is in your court, guys. The choice is yours. Do the right pring here. (LastWeekTonight, 2020b)

Pringles responds on Twitter, sharing a video of the full-bodied Julius Pringles. The tweet does provide the answer Oliver is looking for as well as a pledge to match Oliver’s donation to Feeding America. The tweet reads: “The moment @IamJohnOliver and @LastWeekTonight have been waiting for. In honor of every second John has thought of Mr. P’s body, we are donating $1 to @feedingamerica, which happens to be $10 K” (Del Rosario, 2020). In the end, Oliver raises $20,000 for Feeding America, an organization the show has been supporting since the start of the pandemic. Along the way, he both trolls Pringles by commenting about their quality as a “crisp” snack (rather than a chip) and shares exaggerated, satirical, and marginally vulgar content that would only be permissible on HBO (Davisson & Donovan, 2019).

Oliver engages with yet another corporation in a straight to YouTube clip on May 30, 2021. Dismayed by the lack of exciting new breakfast cereals available on the market and the lack of engagement by Cheerios, a “worthless, impotent, empty suit of a cereal brand” on Twitter, Oliver ends up presenting Cheerios with a fundraising challenge:

I will donate $25,000 to the charity of Cheerios’ choice if they simply use their official account to tweet, “Fuck you.” I’ll do it and what’s more, I will double it if they target the Twitter account of an actual non-famous random user and do it (LastWeekTonight, 2021a).

While Cheerios was not willing to complete Oliver’s request since they are “a family brand,” they did respond on Twitter the next day: “You know we’re a family brand so we can’t drop the F-bomb. We’ll donate $50,000 to @nokidhungry. We’ll also donate $50,000 to the charity of your choice if you tweet, “Families make good go round” (Ortiz, 2021a).

Consistent with LWT’s comic style, Oliver agrees to the deal but adds a controversial twist. In an effort to further troll the Cheerios brand, LWT tweets, “Families make the good go round,” but the show “chose to include photos of some messed up families,” first sharing a picture of the Manson family, followed by another tweet with a picture of the Menendez brothers, and finally a third tweet referencing the Sackler family (Ortiz, 2021b, para 4). Ultimately, LWT also donated $50,000 to No Kid Hungry, matching the Cheerios pledge. In the end, the initial YouTube clip not only contended with Cheerios to promote controversial social media banter between the two accounts and the LWT audience, but also raised $150,000 to combat child hunger. Yet again, Oliver and LWT made a corporation the butt of the joke to champion a cause.

Putting His Money Where His Mouth Is: Donations from HBO on behalf of LWT

Oliver and the staff of LWT also engage with public entities, eventually donating money via HBO to support public projects, but only after first making a mockery of key targets. In August 2020, Oliver attacked the town of Danbury, Connecticut, in a segment on juries, singling them out for being a forgettable and insignificant municipality. Understanding the potential benefit of engaging with Oliver, LWT received a range of online responses from the Danbury community, including from Mayor Mark Boughton who offered to rename the town’s sewer plant as the “John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant because it’s full of crap just like you, John” (Coleman, 2020, para 3).

Oliver talks about how much he loves the engagement with the town on his August 31, 2020, broadcast but is dismayed to find out that Mayor Boughton was only joking. In response, Oliver offers to “donate $55,000 to charities in your area, $25,000 to this foodbank (Connecticut Foodbank), another $25,000 as of this taping to fill all the requests from Danbury teachers on Donors Choose, and $5,000 to ALS Connecticut” (Coleman, 2020, para 6). Of course, Oliver will do this “only if your mayor makes good on his promise to officially name that sewage plant after me” (Coleman, 2020, para 7). After some back and forth with the town, Oliver plays a clip on his October 18, 2020, broadcast in which he actually goes to the town of Danbury for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil the sign renaming the sewage plant, a condition put forth by the town (“John Oliver now has a Sewage Plan Named After Him,” 2020). In the end, Danbury becomes more memorable and significant given Oliver’s comic attention and pointed attacks, while Oliver and the staff of LWT (via HBO) donate to relevant causes on behalf of the show.

Oliver again offers financial support on behalf of LWT in a straight to YouTube video on August 25, 2021. Seeking to continue the show’s support for museums that struggled during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the video promotes the LWT Masterpiece Gallery Tour. Oliver notes, “our collection will be visiting exactly five museums, each of which I’m happy to say will receive a $10,000 donation from us and as a bonus, we’ll also donate another $10,000 to a food bank in their area” (LastWeekTonight, 2021c). While the gallery only included three paintings according to the dedicated websites LWT created, the exhibit supported museums and foodbanks in Grand Rapids, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and San Francisco. All told, the effort donated $100,000 during the fall of 2021 and into the winter of 2022. Yet to be calculated is the additional support the museums received from added visitors to the exhibit by dedicated and engaged LWT fans.

Discussion

John Oliver’s LWT is a unique satirical offering—one that stands apart from other televised political comedy programs given its antagonistic tone, level of social media engagement, and calls for participation. Oliver’s troll-like ambush of individuals, brands, and public entities not only engages his audience via Twitter, but also spurs them toward online giving, responding quickly to calls for contributions in support of relevant social justice-oriented causes (Davisson & Donovan, 2019; Tasliki, 2016). From working to combat food insecurity, to supporting the US Postal Service, to fighting against human rights abuses in foreign countries, Oliver asks members of his civically engaged, resource-rich television and online audience to make small, one-time donations that—as an added bonus—often result in acquiring a piece of show-related paraphernalia.

In effect, Oliver is further building his comic brand and the engaged online identity of his both real and imagined fan community by engendering small bursts of citizen participation (Marwick & boyd, 2011). Viewers participate in part because they see Oliver as a credible source with the ability to spotlight issues that they should care about in a funny, satirical, and engaging way. Donating small amounts to support chosen causes is just a natural low-cost way to engage in activism beyond just viewing the show.

Collectively, however, these contributions add up to have a sizable financial impact on our public political culture. All told, Oliver’s efforts raised upward of five million dollars for domestic and international concerns in a less than two-year period. This amount is based on the limited amount of publicly available reporting surrounding each donation campaign. The true but unmeasured financial impact is likely much greater. Even given considerable potential undercounting, the amount raised by Oliver is not only significant monetarily, but his efforts raise serious questions about what it means—from a normative perspective—when we rely on a muckraking satirist to guide our charitable giving. For the most part, Oliver champions relatively non-controversial causes like hunger, public education, and affordable health care. What would happen, however, if others across the political spectrum were able to successfully replicate this fundraising behavior and calls for donations? Would media personalities exert even more influence on our politics in perhaps a more partisan, ideological, and politicized fashion? What happens when it’s not just the HBO production budget being siphoned off to support political causes, but that of FOX News via Tucker Carlson (or alternatively MSNBC via Rachel Maddow)? What does this dynamic mean for democratic politics?

Not afraid to first harass corporations on social media, Oliver also chides major brands to support efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity. Companies like Pringles and Cheerios engage with Oliver, gaining social media attention and goodwill for their willingness to donate in response to his absurd and often profane challenges. Moreover, Oliver is not afraid to use his platform to put his money where his mouth is, donating on behalf of the show and in turn HBO to further extend the reach of key comedy bits and support non-profit organizations like local museums and community foodbanks.

While it will certainly be beneficial for research to formally quantify the financial impact of these calls for small donations and charitable contributions and their subsequent influence on citizen political behavior, this initial critical assessment underscores Oliver’s importance in the world of political satire and his place of prominence within our public sphere. In sum, Oliver is a credible information source who exposes key issues in a funny, satirical way. Donating in response to Oliver’s calls to action is yet another low-cost way that satire engages viewers in political activism. Understanding the reach and impact of these fundraising calls increases our systematic understanding of the effects of exposure to political satire on behavior at the individual level, and collectively, on the health of our democracy.

From a strategic political communication perspective, the research highlights the inherent value of engaging with Oliver. Using the Danbury, Connecticut case as an exemplar, the naming of the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant not only resulted in greater notoriety and national media attention for the otherwise forgettable and insignificant town, but it raised $55,000 for local causes. Beyond the initial burst of publicity, the town now becomes a bit of a tourist attraction for loyal LWT fans. In a similar vein, the five museums Oliver chose to feature by donating just three rotating pieces of art from the Last Week Tonight Masterpiece Gallery benefited from additional visits from fans of the show and in turn their city foodbanks benefited as well. Even when the butt of the joke as is the case for Pringles and Cheerios, there is inherent strategic value surrounding engagement with Oliver, whether it be for the benefit of a brand, a non-profit, or a small town.

By systematically and thematically reviewing the text of Oliver’s calls for donations across 55 episodes from Seasons 7 and 8 of LWT during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research went above and beyond other smaller-scale research efforts and was able to discern three key themes that form a framework for organizing and making sense of these calls to action. Focusing on calls to action at the (1) individual level, (2) corporate level, and (3) on behalf of Oliver and the show itself allows for a thematic understanding of the myriad of ways in which the television show exhorts financial political action, inspiring viewers, companies, and even HBO to contribute.

By emboldening the average viewer to participate in his satirical and often combative calls for donation, Oliver encourages a healthy level of grassroots-style, critically minded democratic participation in the political process. Not afraid to shy away from complicated political issues or contentious political debate, Oliver is effectively broadening the audience for key policy problems, particularly among those for whom small acts of financial participation are within the scope of their political repertoire. In Oliver’s world, there is power in collective protest and with his low-cost calls to action, LWT has removed most barriers to citizen participation. In effect, Oliver has eroded any power differentials with his satirical approach to politics, using LWT as his democratic call to action.

By trolling relevant corporations, Oliver is encouraging broader corporate responsibility. By design, the off-color banter not only entertains Oliver, his audience, and the corporations caught in the crosshairs, but brings added publicity and social media visibility for social justice causes and the entities that end up lending their support. In many respects, given the already higher levels of political engagement and acumen of political satire viewers, Oliver is in effect preaching to a loyal fan base that just needs a reminder of an additional easy and low-cost way to engage as citizens. Not afraid to lend support on behalf of the show, the giving comes full circle with Oliver and the staff of LWT (via the HBO production budget) getting in on the fundraising calls to action.

The present research effectively begins to document the cultural impact of what happens when a political satirist uses his television and web presence to activate and engage citizens in the act of political giving. What does it say about our contemporary consumer and political culture when a British comedian can so quickly and efficiently incite individual viewers, corporations, and even HBO itself to give to causes that he deems are in need of support and politically important? Have we found a new model for citizen participation and financial engagement that will have a lasting impact on our political culture? What happens when this model is replicated by more partisan, ideological, and overtly political media personalities? The present research offers an initial understanding of the cultural impact of these requests for donations and yet looks ahead to future research that will quantify the impact of these televised satirical yet financial calls to action.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Amy B. Becker

Author Biography

Amy B. Becker (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an associate professor of communication at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, MD. Her research examines the effects of exposure and attention to political entertainment including late night comedy, public opinion toward controversial political issues, and public engagement with science.

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John Oliver as the Pandemic Fundraiser? Championing Causes and Political Participation Through Satirical Television

Abstract

Keywords

John Oliver: The Comic Recruiter

John Oliver and the COVID-19 Pandemic

What Exactly is a Call to Action?

Methods

Results

LWT and Calls for Individual-Level Engagement

Using LWT to Engage with Corporations

Putting His Money Where His Mouth Is: Donations from HBO on behalf of LWT

Discussion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biography

References