Mapping the Echo: Studio Audience Reactions in the Discourse of Late-Night Shows
Mapping the Echo: Studio Audience Reactions in the Discourse of Late-Night Shows

Author(s): Kiril Havezov
Subject(s): Social Sciences, Media studies, Communication studies
Published by: Факултет по журналистика и масова комуникация, Софийски университет „Св. Кл. Охридски”
Keywords: late-night shows; studio audience; reactions; speech tempo; multimodal discourse; hybrid genres
Summary/Abstract: The study examines studio audience reactions as a rhetorical mechanism within the hybrid discourse of late-night political comedy, where meaning emerges dynamically rather than through scripted delivery alone. It aims to conceptualise the echo engine as a process of live meaning co-production and to test whether speech tempo and reaction patterns reveal stable differences across formats within the hybrid genre. The analysis draws on 21 monologues from four U.S. late-night shows, processed through a workflow that combines transcript standardisation and real-time annotation with a custom tool. The results show that tempo reliably indicates the shifting balance between journalistic (informational) density and performative interaction, while systematically mapped reactions demonstrate the audience's structural agency in shaping rhetorical momentum. The study provides a replicable analytical framework for hybrid media genres.

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