No joke: Across globe, satire morphs into misinformation

Argentina supporters cheer before the start of the Qatar 2022 World Cup football semi-final match between Argentina and Croatia. AFP/File

WASHINGTON—Is a US state considering a tax on breathing? Is celebrating goals forbidden during the Qatar World Cup because that is “too gay?” Did insect repellent manufacturers recruit a Ugandan man for his mosquito-killing farts?

Satire, parody and jokes packed with absurdity typically draw laughter, but around the world they are too often mistaken as real, prompting fact-checkers to debunk what they call a leading source of misinformation despite pushback from their publishers.

Several satirical outlets mimic legitimate media websites, often sowing confusion among readers with what appear to be typical news articles but are in fact fabricated stories.

Sometimes even with disclaimers clearly marking their articles as satire, many readers take them at face value.

“Satire can mislead more than you’d think,” Shannon Poulsen, who researches the link between humor and misinformation at Ohio State University, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Given that I find new examples of people falling for it every day, I’d say it is a notable and consequential form of misinformation.”

The humorous fiction often makes the internet erupt with laughter, but researchers are not laughing about its potential to fool the public, which sometimes includes media organizations.

Debunking humor

In September, during a live broadcast on France’s CNews television channel, presenter Pascal Praud attributed to the country’s energy minister remarks that were invented by a parody Twitter account.

A version of the article about the man with the “deadly farts,” which AFP traced to a parody website, was published by the British tabloid The Sun and drew thousands of interactions on Facebook.

The one about the Qatar World Cup, published last month by the satirical section of Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, was widely shared as authentic news on Facebook, Telegram and Twitter.

In the United States, stories by the popular satirical website The Onion are so often mistaken as real that online forums have sprung up to ridicule those who fall for them. —AFP But despite such errors, satirists have lashed out at fact-checking websites for debunking their content.

In September, the Indian satirical website Fauxy served a legal notice to the Mumbai-based fact-checker Boom Live, accusing it of damaging its reputation after it labelled one of its articles fake.

Boom’s editor Jency Jacob contends the action was necessary as many gullible readers were sharing it on social media as legitimate news.

“We usually avoid debunking satire as we believe it is a valid form of expression,” Jacob told AFP.

“But we have done it when we felt it was created without adequate disclaimers and if the satire was widely believed to be true.”

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram say they reduce the circulation, visibility—and potential for profit—of links that are labelled misinformation. But some websites peddling misinformation skirt the barrier by labeling their content satire, researchers say.

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