Source: NiemanLab [https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/08/maybe-you-know-that-article-is-satire-but-a-lot-of-people-cant-tell-the-difference/ ]. Author: R. Kelly Garrett, Robert Bond and Shanon Poulsen.
Defining satire as such may seem to make the joke less "likeable". But it's also the most effective way we know to prevent people from taking satirical content as fact—something that's surprisingly common.
In July, the website "Snopes" published a piece of verified facts about a story posted on The Babylon Bee, a popular satirical news site with a conservative bent. Conservative journalist David French criticized “Snopes” for discrediting what was, in his opinion, “obviously satire. Visibly". A few days later, Fox News gave it television spaceof the executive director (CEO) of "The Bee".
But do they all recognize satire as easily as the French?
Our team of communication researchers has spent years studying misinformation, the satire and social networks. Over the past few months, we've been surveying Americans' attitudes about dozens of high-interest political issues. We identified news stories – real or fake – that were being shared widely on social media.
We found that many of the fake stories weren't intentionally trying to mislead their readers; they actually came from satirical sites and many people seemed to believe them.
People have long since mistaken satire for real news. In the famous satirical program "The Colbert Report", the comedian Stephen Colbert took on the character of a conservative news expert. However, the researchers found that conservatives repeatedly misinterpreted Colbert's interpretation as an honest expression of his political beliefs. "The Onion", a popular satirical news website, is so often misunderstood that it has a large online community. which is dedicated to mocking people who have "fallen prey".
But now more than ever, Americans are worried about their abilities to distinguish between what is true and what is not and think that the news is made up a worrying problem that the state is facing.
Sometimes the satire is easy to spot, like when The Babylon Bee reported that President Donald Trump had nominated Joe Biden to run the Transportation Security Administrationit based on "Biden's abilities to approach people inappropriately and make unwanted physical advances." But other titles are more difficult to understand.
For example, the claim that John Bolton described an attack on two Saudi oil depots like "an attack on all Americans" may sound plausible until you're told that this story was published in The Onion.
The truth is, it's not easy to understand political satire online. Many satirical web sites imitate the look and feel of news sites. You must be familiar with the political issue being satirized. You have to understand what normal political rhetoric is like and you have to recognize exaggeration. Otherwise, it is quite easy to take a satirical news story for the truth.
Can you tell when you look at it?
Our study on misinformation and social media spanned six months. Every two weeks, we identified 10 of the most widely shared fake political news on social media, including satirical news. Others were fake news reports intended to deliberately mislead readers. We then asked a representative group of over 800 Americans to tell us whether they believed the claims based on the distribution trend. At the end of the study, we measured respondents' attitudes to the 120 most widely shared fake news stories.
Satirical articles like those found in "The Bee Babylon" appeared very often in our study. In fact, the stories published by The Babylon Bee were among the most widely distributed—factually inaccurate—in almost every study we conducted. In one study, The Babylon Bee had articles dealing with five different lies.
For each claim, we asked people to tell us whether it was true or false and how confident they were in their belief. Then we calculated the proportion of Democrats and Republicans who described these statements as "definitely true."
Members of both parties failed to recognize that "The Babylon Bee" is satire, but Republicans were far more likely to do so. Of the 23 fake news stories that came from The Babylon Bee, 8 of them were completely believed by 15% of Republican respondents. One of the most believed lies was based in a series of invented quotes attributed to the republican Ilhan Omar. A satirical article that suggested that Senator Bernie Sanders had criticized the billionaire who paid off the student debt of "Morehouse College", was another fake news story that Republicans fell prey to.
Our polls also revealed 9 untruths that emerged from The Onion. Here, the Democrats were most often deceived, although they were not so naive. However, almost 1 in 8 Democrats were sure that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway had questioned the value of the rule of law.
Not surprisingly, depending on the headline, satire may be more likely to mislead members of one political party versus another. Political views of individuals they constantly "color" their perceptions about the facts. However, Americans' inability to agree on what is true or false is a problem for democracy.
However, the bigger question is what we should do about this problem.
In one recent work, we compared the effectiveness of different ways to detect inaccurate content in social media. We tested several different methods. One included a warning where the fact check had determined there was an inaccuracy in the post. Another had a message indicating that the content was from a satirical website.
We found that naming an article "satire" was uniquely effective. Users were less likely to believe stories labeled as satire, were less likely to share them, and viewed the source as less credible. They also appreciated the warning.
On Facebook tested this method myself a few years ago, and "Google News" started tto name some satirical content. This suggests that clearly labeling satirical content as such can help social media users navigate an environment that is complex and sometimes confusing.
Despite French criticism of Snopes for fact-checking The Babylon Bee, he concludes his essay by noting that “Snopes can serve a useful purpose. And there is a space to remind the reader that satire is satire." On this point, we couldn't have agreed more.
*Citizens Channel/Antenela Ndrevataj
