With easy access to various social media platforms, more and more people are able to publicly publish literary works, but there’s not a system that ensures the quality and integrity of the works being produced. Coupled with the poor levels of media and information literacy of the general public, the lines between journalism, satire, and fake news blur, and it's getting progressively more difficult to distinguish them from one another, allowing misinformation and disinformation to spread.

 

     Satire is a ‘comedic critique’. The goal is to provoke change by exaggerating, dramatizing, or ridiculing a situation to a comic extent to highlight the underlying issue in it. According to Marguerite De Leon and Don Kevin Hapal, an author sets the satirical tone using different devices such as paradoxes, sarcasm, puns, etc. These are meant to alert the audience that a piece is comedic instead of accurate. As a critique, satire is inherently biased, either for or against something.

 

     VERA Files illustrated how pro-Duterte Facebook users shared an article posted by Adobo Chronicles, a self-proclaimed satirical site, that claimed Leni Robredo had declined an interview with BBC, which they used to ridicule her. Who is the perpetrator of fake news here?

 

     The Adobo Chronicles is referred here as a ‘self-proclaimed satirical site’ as it has disclaimers plastered all over that warn the audience that it is satire. The issue here is that satire is meant to be detectable just from reading the text. As De Leon and Hapal point out, “[Adobo Chronicles‘ article] neither goes out of its way to be absurd, nor tries to tell a universal truth – both of which are needed for a piece to be seriously deemed satirical.”

 

     Satire is not meant to deceive or misinform the audience, rather for an author to express their thoughts in a lighter and more universally understood language: humor. Through this, they push their reader to see from their perspective.

 

     While it is primarily the fault of the author for misrepresenting their article as satire, this situation also elucidates the responsibility of the audience to verify information before they use or share it.

 

     For these reasons, satire requires certain skills to be successful. If a piece fails to reach any of the standards, it cannot be claimed as satire. If it’s not comedic or entertaining, if it lacks critique or nuance, or if it’s passable as news and not a biased stand, then it’s fake news.

 

     Satirist Aaron Hagey Mackay condenses the difference between the two: “satire plays with its audience; fake news preys on its audience.” Satire presents data that is untrue and exaggerated, but well done, it will be apparent that it’s not information to be used truthfully. Oppositely, fake news is intentionally created to look like trustworthy news, whether or not it has the intention to deceive.

 

     The example presented demonstrates what happens when satire is not done well: taken as authentic news, people believe and use it, thus fake news spreads. This calls satirists and media consumers alike to be more mindful and responsible with what they share online. Satire can be a very effective literary method but only when its producers and consumers understand its premises.