Abstract. Individuals frequently process political posts on social media in the context of humorous, non-political posts, which research suggests may stimulate or dampen their engagement with the political posts depending on their political involvement. To clarify that claim, I conducted a 2 × 2 experiment ( N = 286) in which individuals viewed political posts situated among either humorous or non-humorous posts, all presented as video-recorded posts on a social media newsfeed, in a condition of either low or high political involvement. Among the results, the humorous posts directly boosted general attention, the elaboration of political posts, and the acquisition of political knowledge in the low political involvement group and stimulated political participation in the high political involvement group. Further analyses revealed that, in the low involvement group, increased attention and the elaboration of the posts may have mediated humor’s effect on the acquisition of political knowledge. Meanwhile, its positive effect on participation in the high involvement group occurred independently from general attention and the elaboration of the posts. Altogether, the findings suggest that humorous social media contexts may benefit the acquisition of political knowledge and political participation.

中文翻译：

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幽默帖子如何影响社交媒体上政治帖子的参与度

摘要。个人经常在幽默、非政治帖子的背景下处理社交媒体上的政治帖子，研究表明，这可能会刺激或抑制他们对政治帖子的参与，具体取决于他们的政治参与程度。为了澄清这一说法，我进行了一个 2 × 2 实验 (N = 286)，其中个人查看位于幽默或非幽默帖子中的政治帖子，所有这些帖子都以视频记录的形式出现在社交媒体新闻源上，条件是政治参与度低或高。结果中，幽默帖子直接提升了低政治参与度群体的普遍关注度、政治帖子的阐述和政治知识的获取，并刺激了高政治参与度群体的政治参与。进一步的分析表明，在参与度低的群体中，更多的关注和帖子的详细阐述可能对幽默对政治知识的获取产生了中介作用。同时，它对参与高参与小组的积极影响独立于普遍关注和帖子的阐述。总而言之，研究结果表明幽默的社交媒体环境可能有利于政治知识的获取和政治参与。