Consumption, Characteristics, and Consequences of Satirical News
Authors:   , Brugman Britta Carmen 
Published: March 2023

This dissertation examines contemporary satirical news. Satirical news covers current affairs through a unique mix of humorous and critical commentary. Previously, researchers have especially examined (a) which types of individuals regularly consume satirical news, (b) which messages they are exposed to, and (c) when and how exposure to satirical news messages influences individuals’ feelings, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior towards the satirized topics and targets. Such studies have contributed many valuable insights into the scope and dynamics of satirical news, but they largely focused on one specific type of outlet: American television shows with a liberal political leaning, such as The Daily Show. In doing so, previous research mostly treated satirical news as monolithic: a phenomenon that manifests in consistent and coherent ways across outlets.

The novel contribution of this dissertation is that it opens up the satirical news literature to include popular yet understudied outlets for satirical news to improve scholarly understanding of the genre as a whole: its consumption, its (message) characteristics, and its consequences. These outlets include (1) satirical news outlets from other countries than the United States (i.e., the Netherlands), (2) satirical news outlets that publish written articles online (vs. television shows), and (3) satirical news outlets with a conservative political leaning (vs. liberal). This dissertation thus breaks new ground by systematically identifying when and how the genre of satirical news is not monolithic but diverse across outlets.

The dissertation draws upon multiple theoretical approaches (e.g., field theory, discursive integration hypothesis, framing theory) and debates in the satirical news literature (e.g., about satirical news having a liberal bias). Eight studies were conducted, which are presented in six stand-alone articles.

First, a cross-sectional survey compared audience characteristics as predictors of satirical news consumption between outlets that differed in country origin. Linguistic analyses that focused on the co-occurrences of linguistic features next explored how satirical news reflects a blend of regular news and fiction across outlets that differed in medium type and political leaning. In subsequent chapters, computer-automated and manual content analyses identified outlet differences in the use of frames that highlight personality traits of societal actors (character frames), emotional interpretations of the news (emotional frames), moral interpretations (moral frames), and metaphorical and hyperbolic interpretations (figurative frames). Finally, a social media analysis and two experiments were conducted to test for associations across outlets between the presence of figurative framing in satirical news and engagement and persuasion.

The main findings of these studies belong to three categories: genre-level findings, outlet-type-specific findings, and outlet-specific findings. Findings that were shared across all examined outlets in this dissertation can be considered compatible with a monolithic approach to studying satirical news. However, many main findings were outlet-type-specific or outlet-specific, which empirically confirms that satirical news is not monolithic and should better be studied using a pluralistic approach. Therefore, this dissertation brings to light the importance of justifying the selection of outlets in research that assesses the social, cultural, and political significance of the genre. Satirical news findings are likely to differ between different types of outlets and between individual outlets for satirical news.

This notion has important implications for satire theory, because some theories, models, and concepts may only apply to some satirical news outlet types or individual outlets. Moreover, practical implications of satirical news’ consumption, characteristics, and consequences for society and politics should also be viewed through a pluralistic theoretical lens. It may for instance well be that only some outlet types or outlets promote polarization and not all outlets engage the politically unengaged. Taken together, this dissertation calls for a shift in satirical news research towards a more outlet-centered paradigm.