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Sunzida Faiz
Professor Coy
English 125: Section DC1
December 14, 2018
Birds and Satirists Delivering News

In the age of the Internet, social media plays a big role in everyone's lives. If you have

access to social media you have a access to all types of news and you’re connected with more

people across the world. Through the use of social media people are able to communicate, share

and spread ideas faster. Through communication and sharing, social bonds are created on social

media between people who may or may not know each other. Nowadays, news and fake news

are common terms that are associated with politics and used on social networking sites such as

Twitter and YouTube. Satirical television news programs take great advantage of politics by

portraying news with comedy, which is sometimes considered fake news because what they

show is not completely accurate. In the modern Twitter and satirical news culture, our way of

thinking is fast and narrow due to the social bonds created and our beliefs are not being

challenged.

Exposure to comedic journalism can narrow a person’s views on politics and change their

way of interpreting real news. Politics is a popular topic amongst satirical television news

programs because comedians get to express their feelings towards politicians directly and

influence people with their personal beliefs. Comedians who do their research know exactly how

actual news work. Their shows imitate real news when it comes to formatting or visually

representing information. Satirical television news programs often mix actual news with comedy

and their own opinions which makes it “fake news”. Comedians are really good at

“sensationalizing insignificant stories that would otherwise be regarded as irrelevant by the

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public” (Brummette 499). Political satires are created because these television shows care about

ratings and views. On YouTube, people are able to gain profit if they have a lot of viewers.

That’s why many satirists don’t care if the news they portray are irrelevant or misleading

because it is a type of business and they care about money. Satirical “fake news” are appealing to

people because news may not cover something that these shows cover. A connection is created

between the viewer and the comedian that’s putting the “fake news” out there. According to a

video by Wall Street Journal, in satirical television shows such as Saturday Night Live (SNL)

comedians play out real events that already took place but with humor and they make it more

direct which makes it effective and entertaining (00:02:28-00:02:40). In one of their videos, two

comedians are dressed up as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and they reenacted the

presidential debate. The comedians wore wigs that matched the type of hair Donald Trump and

Hillary Clinton has and they wore clothes that looked exactly like the clothes Trump and Clinton

wore during their debate. Each had a camera that focused on them and the screen was split in the

middle to show both of the comedians debating at the same time just like in the real presidential

debates. The videography was done in the same way, but Saturday Night Live had its digital

watermark on their video for copyright reasons which is how people can tell the difference

between the real video and SNL’s video. Everything was similar to the actual presidential debate

except for the dialogues these comedians presented to the viewers. Hillary Clinton seemed like

the nicer person in this skit because she said things that were clever and her body language was

more composed. However, the comedian that played Trump was saying things that people who

dislike Trump would like to hear. His makeup was done in a way that made him appear meaner

and throughout the whole skit he had a scowling expression on his face whereas the comedian
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that portrayed Hillary had neutral expression and only raised her eyebrows a few times. This skit

was obviously one-sided because the writers and the producers of the show made one person

look better than the other through their dialogues, diction and gestures. The targeted audience of

this skit was people who supported Hillary before and during the election. Through this type of

satirical “fake news” on social media homophily is created because this type of news will appeal

to people that dislike Trump and they will form a type of connection with each other since they

have similar opinions and views. This type of social bond may affect one’s beliefs negatively

because they’ll perceive a politician the way satirical “fake news” portrays that politician and

their hatred toward that politician will only grow stronger. Once this type of social bond is

created, those people may have a hard time handling criticism against their beliefs or accepting

people who have different views. Since satirists depend on exaggeration and on their shows they

can do anything, they’ll go to any length to make one person look the worst person in the world

just so they can get more people to watch their skits.

Satirical news shape how young adults think since young people are more likely to view

comedic journalism. Generation Z is all about convenience, they like quick solutions, things that

aren’t time consuming and they like to get information from social media. Young adults are more

likely to view satirical news because they always have access to some sort of electronic device,

internet and social media, so they can view it literally anywhere at anytime. In the article “Selfie”

by Rachel Syme, she speaks about images and technology. In one of the short chapters, Syme

refers to selfies a lot of young people sent her and she discusses how almost every young adult

has access to an electronic device and they can use it anytime to do anything including taking

selfies (2015). Young adults that view satirical news on social networking sites will frequently
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find videos with the same agenda, due to algorithms. Algorithms are used to analyze huge data

sets (Shore 859). When people watch a few videos on YouTube the algorithms will try to

analyze and find patterns in the videos they watch and it will suggest them similar videos.

Satirical news are created with comedy so young adults can relate to it and who doesn’t like to

have a laugh. Satirists take advantage of their freedom of expression and create videos that

sometimes mislead people and spread false information. Satirical news are easier to comprehend

but by viewing only the ones we like and agree with we are limiting ourselves from expanding

our knowledge politically. Satirical news are a type of propaganda that divert people’s views by

giving them strong reasons to dislike one political party over the other. Even if comedians can’t

portray one person as the good person they can still find ways to make the other person look bad,

resulting in the viewer disliking one person and eventually agreeing with the other person even if

they don’t necessarily agree with them. Young people’s minds are always changing and the

information that’s being presented to us can have a great impact on our opinions and beliefs.

People relying on satirical news to satisfy their beliefs are missing a whole set of perspectives,

and their views become bias.

Homophily on social media can create barriers between different groups of people which

can lead to a person getting stuck with ideologically narrow group. Social networking sites are

one of the many ways to approach literacy in today’s world. Social networking sites, such as

Twitter, can help create homophily by choice and by chance. Homophily is when people tend to

associate with others that share same characteristics, social status, beliefs and/or views as them

(Shore 863). Many people use social media to send out important messages because it travels

faster through social media and reaches millions of people. Politicians use Twitter to send out
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messages most likely to people that believe in their agenda. Liberals and conservatives both use

Twitter and they’re aware of each others’ presence but “won’t acknowledge it which divides up

their followers” (Shore 868). This also creates conflicts between liberals and conservatives. This

is one type of social bond because each side will stick to their side even if they agree with the

other side. This is known as confirmation bias, “social media users are likely to follow other

users whose opinions are similar to their own” (Shore 850). Usually people friend or follow

people who share same interests as them on social media. For example, if two people have the

same profession, like the same sports and/or share similar political beliefs they are most likely to

follow/friend each other. When people follow others with similar political views their belief only

gets stronger because other people are confirming that what they believe may be right. This

creates homophily by chance and it’s very limited because a person will only accept people that

have the same beliefs as them and they may oppose people who challenge their views. This

narrows the way people look at things because if you believe something is right and twenty

people you follow also believe it’s right you’ll feel confident about your opinion. However, if

one person disagrees and they are correct, you’ll still believe you’re correct and they’re incorrect

because the social bond you created with others reassure your beliefs. The Internet has its own

language that it uses to function. One of the things it uses is algorithm to find patterns. Social

networking sites use algorithm to suggest users things they may like or people they may want to

follow based on their interests. This way we only form a social bond with a particular group of

people and since we all think in a similar way everything is more narrow here. We all express

our opinions and support each other and we’re stuck in an echo chamber because we only get to

hear what we would like to hear. If this type of homophily wasn’t created through social
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networking sites then we would be able to follow/friend people who oppose our views even if we

don’t like it. Seeing different views through different lenses on a topic can help people explore

many sides of one story.

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Works Cited

Brummette, John; Marcia DiStaso, Michail Vafeiadis, Marcus Messner. “Read All About It: The

Politicization of “Fake News” on Twitter.” Journalism and Mass Communication

Quarterly. Vol 95(2), 2018, p 497-517.

Rivero, Tanya. “When Does Political Satire Go Too Far?” YouTube, uploaded by Wall Street

Journal, 13 Oct. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pclrJT6ZHXs.

Shore, Jesse; Jiye Baek, Chrysanthos Dellarocas. “Network Structure and Patterns of Information

Diversity on Twitter.” MIS Quarterly. Vol. 42 Issue 3, 2018, p849-872. 34p. Academic

Search Complete (EBSCO), doi:10.25300/MISQ/2018/14558.

Syme, Rachel. “SELFIE.” ​Medium.com​, Medium, 19 Nov. 2015,

medium.com/matter/selfie-fe945dcba6b0.