Fake News

This article is a broad examination of how politically motivated and activist - oriented practitioners have deployed satirical fake news to call attention to various causes and sites of struggle and to create opportunities for dissenting perspectives to register with broader publics.

This study builds on research about political humor, press metacoverage, and intertextuality to examine the effects of news coverage about political satire on audience members. The analysis uses experimental data to test whether news coverage of Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC influenced knowledge and opinion regarding Citizens United , as well as political trust and internal political efficacy.

Though Saturday Night Live 's “Weekend Update” has become one of the most iconic of fake news programs, it is remarkably unfocused on either satiric critique or parody of particular news conventions. In contrast to more politically invested contemporary programs, the genre of fake news on Saturday Night Live has been largely emptied to serve the needs of the larger show.

Previous research has shown that information that is repeated is more likely to be rated as true than information that has not been heard before. The current experiment examines whether familiarity with false news stories would increase rates of truthfulness and plausibility for these events. Participants who had previously read about the stories were more likely to believe that they had heard the false stories from a source outside the experiment.

As scholarly examinations of the US news parody programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report multiply, we must recognize that American satirists claim no monopoly on the genre. This article provides an overview of international forms of news parody and political satire as they take shape across continents and cultures. It considers the global flow of parody formats, and the multiple ways in which news parody adapts to different contexts.

This article examines the parody of The Daily Show and examines in through five different critical frameworks. The author distinguishes between news content and news mediums to show how The Daily Show is able to offer alternative narratives to those on mainstream news shows.

Using exclusive data from the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the authors conduct a detailed and exhaustive analysis of political jokes on late night shows dating back to 1992. Drawing on examples from comedians like Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, the authors pinpoint the main targets and themes of late night comedy and examine its impact on political institutions and politicians.

This is an MA thesis completed at the University of Guelph. This study presents a bridge between satirical discourse and journalistic practice, offering a thorough overview of the shifting terrain of contemporary journalism. This dissertation isolates and examines three dominant variants of fake news: corporately-funded and government-sponsored propaganda; professionalized forms of news parody; and activist-oriented, politically motivated fake news.

This research assesses possible associations between viewing fake news (i.e., political satire) and attitudes of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism toward political candidates. Using survey data collected during the 2006 Israeli election campaign, the study provides evidence for an indirect positive effect of fake news viewing in fostering the feelings of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism, through the mediator variable of perceived realism of fake news.