Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist and the co-author of Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency, says this split is exacerbated by the increasingly polarized conservative news landscape. Fox News has created a siloed environment for their viewers, one where they can pick up memes and in-jokes that are incomprehensible to those outside their bubble and then go watch someone they agree with make jokes about those things.
“Fox News has been able to create an environment where there is more of a seamless transition [for] the people who are spending their time consuming news in the silo of the conservative media environment, [where they have] that back-story understanding,” Farnsworth says.
