Satire and Parody

Content that typically makes fun of news programs and uses humor to engage with their audience members can be classified as news satire (Tandoc, Lim & Ling, 2018). Often, the overall intent of spreading this type of information is to provide entertainment by suggesting humorous critiques of political or pop cultural events.

For example, Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” is an example of a highly appraised fictitious news program that uses satire to poke fun at current events. While still categorized as “fake news,” satirical information does not come from journalists, but rather comedians or entertainers (Tandoc, Lim & Ling, 2018).

While similar to satire, parody is another type of fake news. The difference between the two is simply a function of how the humor is used. “Instead of providing direct commentary on current affairs through humor, parody plays on the ludicrousness of issues and highlights them by making up entirely fictitious news stories,” according to the scholars, Tandoc, Lim and Ling (2018). Specifically, political parody outlets capitalize on the “vague plausibility of the news item” (p. 142). The Babylon Bee is a leading parody site where they claim the motto, “totally inerrant in all its truth claims.”