Between Headlines and Punchlines: Journalistic Role Performance in Western News Satire

Abstract

News satire has proliferated worldwide and has emerged as a valid site for public discourse.What we see today is a spectrum of news satire formats ranging from the predominantly absurd and comedic to more overtly journalistic satirical deconstructions of current affairs.This maturation of news satire as an alternative form of journalism thus underlines the necessity for further research into the journalistic roles that certain news satire formats carry out.This study assesses the journalistic roles in three international news satire formats i.e., the United States' Last Week Tonight, the Swedish Svenska Nyheter, and the Dutch Zondag met Lubach and presents the findings of a content analysis of 150 satirical segments having aired from October 2020 to April 2023.We conclude that Western news satire displays a fairly united execution of journalistic role performances with high scores for the Advocate, Watchdog and Civic Educator roles, yet low scores for Reporter and Loyalist roles.Furthermore, we present the Comedic Interlocutor role, and discuss its place in alternative conceptions of professional journalism today.This study empirically validates that humor and entertainment are not irreconcilable with a factual, civically engaged, critical kind of journalistic coverage.

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