Satirical persuasion and topic salience

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of satirical persuasion on audience responses in terms of topic salience and prior attitude valence. The areas of audience responses investigated were attitude change and immunization to counter‐attitudinal messages. The results indicated that (a) satire interacted with salience to affect attitude change, and (b) satire was effective in immunization against counter‐persuasion.