Study looks at social media humour during US election

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) has looked at the use of humour on Twitter during the 2016 US Presidential election. The study found that 35 per cent of election related posts used humour, and that Hillary Clinton supporters were almost three times more likely to use jokes than Donald Trump supporters. The study, which analysed more than 14,000 Tweets made during highly publicised moments of the election, found that 5,000 of those tweets used humour in some way. Study leader Dr Jenny Davis of the ANU School of Sociology said around 70 per cent of humorous posts were attempting to engage in serious political discourse. While Clinton supporters were more likely to use humour overall, Trump supporters who did use humour were almost always making serious political claims.   "We looked for instances on Twitter of people engaging in political discussion through jokes and memes and found there was heavier participation in general among the progressive left," Dr Davis said. Dr Davis said the study identified three key themes of humorous content with the most common theme being tweets that in some way tried to discredit the opposing side of the political divide.