News satire engagement as a transgressive space for genre work

Abstract

News satire plays with the political in ways that transgress journalistic as well as social and moral boundaries. But the ways in which audiences in different contexts engage with news satire are under-researched, despite the implications of the genre’s role for contemporary citizenship. This article asks how Swedish young adult audiences construct and negotiate news satire’s inherent transgressions, spanning across the ‘serious’ and ‘silly’. Based on interview and focus group data, the analysis shows how sustained news satire engagement entails genre work that aids the development of ‘transgression skills’. This process is stimulating, constructed as part of a complex and emotionally authentic mode of political communication, within a context where journalistic certainty has dominated. By achieving transgression skills, audiences are symbolically put on the same level as political elites and develop abilities to shift perspectives; thereby experiencing a deeper engagement with, and understanding of, political issues and performance.

Keywords

audience studies audiences engagement genre genre work news satire political communication political journalism satire transgression

Introduction and aim

News satire plays with political perspectives, ambiguity and emotion. It transgresses the boundaries of conventional news journalism, in well-known examples like The Daily Show (Comedy Central, 1996–) and Last Week Tonight (HBO, 2015–) and in local versions such as the Swedish radio programme Tankesmedjan (‘The Think Tank’; Swedish Radio P3, 2010).

News satire’s transgression simultaneously challenges and confirms the boundaries of news. Such transgression becomes ‘a part, if perhaps an insane part, of the normative’ (Gournelos and Gunkel, 2012: 7). Mixing ‘serious’ modes of address with ‘silly’ humorous ones, news satire focuses on the news through a lens of comedy and irony. Specifically, rather than just parodying politicians, contemporary news satire provides interviews with public figures, scrutinizes news programming and does ‘the investigative work of matching a politician’s or pundit’s statements, with past actions and positions’ (Day, 2013: 415). The use of humour adds another level of transgression, as humour is often is used to deal ‘with sensitive topics, touching on or transgressing social norms and moral boundaries around sexuality, religion or death’ (Graefer and Das, 2017: 2). These two levels of transgression: genre-related, and related to social and moral boundaries, are often conflated. In some cases, this leads scholars and journalists to worry that news satire engagement leads to cynicism (Coletta, 2009).

Despite such worries, news satire is becoming increasingly established, especially in British and American media. Globally, it is still on the rise, with local programmes often emulating Anglophone examples (Baym and Jones, 2012; Kumar and Combe, 2015). These programmes are all distinguishable from other political comedy forms such as sketch parody, but their crossing contextual boundaries is significant with regard to understanding their value for contemporary citizenship. Gradually, audience-focused lines of argument have begun to emerge, suggesting that citizens are ‘increasingly media-savvy’ and ‘know that public artifice exists’ (Jones, 2010: 182). This leads them to question and ‘reformulat[e] what it is they want from political communication, including journalism’ (Jones, 2010: 182f).

With a few American exceptions (Edgerly, 2017; Jones, 2010), news satire has been studied as text or in terms of effects, leaving audience engagement under-explored. The present article joins previous studies in emphasizing news satire engagement as contextually bound and productive. The transgressive force of news satire engagement needs to be understood through studies of the regularly engaged news satire audience, and related to contextual factors, in the search for what engagement in news satire might mean.

By adopting an explorative approach and underscoring contextualization of audience members’ subjective constructions, the present study adds nuance to the understanding of news satire’s potentially empowering transgressive force. With the methodological goal of exploring what audiences ‘do’ with media (Hermes, 2005) focus is on the agency of the news satire audience, in relation to news journalism. Specifically, the aim of the present article is to analyse social subjects as audiences of news satire, to reveal the ways in which satirical transgressions are articulated. To achieve this, the analysis focuses on how young audiences construct and negotiate news satire’s inherent transgressions, spanning across the ‘serious’ and ‘silly.’ It identifies the kinds of generic, as well as social and moral boundaries that are implied by such constructions, and relates them to the Swedish context.

Sweden has about 10 million inhabitants and a relatively small media market, where niche genres such as news satire struggle. At the same time, the country has among the highest voter turnout in the world, which includes young adult voters. Further, the country’s political media is characterized by the historical dominance of social democratic political culture, resulting in a democratic corporatist media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) where public service media enjoys high levels of trust and consumption (Wadbring, 2016). The small media market, yet robust engagement in voting and news programming, are two specific factors that differ from the Anglophone contexts. They might also be a reason for why news satire programming isn’t as established in Sweden. In other words, the foundational argument of the present article is that sustained news satire engagement is empowering yet context dependent in ways that need to be explored further.

In the following sections the theoretical trajectories of the study are unpacked and related to previous research and the Swedish context.

Theoretical trajectories and previous research

Jervis conceives of transgression as follows:

Transgression, unlike opposition or reversal, involves a hybridization, the mixing of categories and the questioning of the boundaries that separate categories. It is not, in itself, subversion; it is not an overt and deliberate challenge to the status quo. What it does do, though, is implicitly interrogate the law, pointing to not just the specific, and frequently arbitrary, mechanisms of power on which it rests – despite its universalizing pretentions – but also to its complicity, its involvement in what it prohibits. (Jervis, 1999: 4)

This conception of transgression fits well with satire, as it is associated with boundary crossing and ambiguity. Hutcheon (1994, 2000) traces themes of duality throughout the literature on satire, parody, irony and humour. She refers to Bakhtin (1968, 1987), whose idea of the carnivalesque has been central in scholarly work on satire (Gray et al., 2009). The carnivalesque emphasizes emancipation; it ‘is outside and contrary to all existing forms of the coercive socioeconomic and political organization, which is suspended for the time of the festivity’ (Bakhtin, 1994: 225). The transgressions of the carnival are always affirming that which they subvert – transgression is ‘not the same as disorder; it opens up chaos and reminds us of the necessity of order’ (Jenks, 2003: 7).

The transgressive potential of news satire is only realized if it is detected (Hutcheon, 1994). There are two main levels of transgression at work in news satire: generic transgression, between ‘serious’ news and ‘silly’ humour; and the social and moral transgression inherent in humour (Graefer and Das, 2017). Further, the ironic mode common to contemporary news satire is ‘trans-ideological’ – used for various ideologies and motivations (Hutcheon, 1994). It has become ‘a mode of political discourse’, albeit one that doesn’t appeal to everyone (Day, 2011: 181). Since irony uses indirection as its modus operandi, it can be understood as dishonest (Day, 2011). It isn’t only a matter of taste but may also depend on inexperience with such modes; on the subjective level, and in relation to political and cultural contexts. When satirical modes of discourse gradually become normalized parts of political culture, contemporary young adult aversion towards journalistic ‘fundamentalist certainty’ (Coleman, 2013b: 383) is exposed. However, as these modes work by intentionally transgressing, at least on the level of social and moral transgression, they will inevitably continue to be contested by scholars, journalists, political elites and audiences.

It is in relation to the first level that the Swedish context is most relevant. It shares some characteristics with the other Nordic countries. First, it has a relatively small media market, where niche genres such as contemporary forms of broadcast news satire struggle to survive, meaning few comedians can afford to specialize and focus solely on news satire. Second, social democratic political culture has dominated for over a century. While this dominance has lessened, it still affects engagement with satire. The Swedish public service monopoly was one of the longest running in the world (Djerf-Pierre and Weibull, 2013). Public service continues to be popular; among news sources, public service is the most trusted (Westlund, 2019), although young adults are showing signs of moving towards more mixed news media habits (Wadbring, 2016).

Sweden’s media system is often classified as democratic corporatist (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). This implies a ‘well-established professional culture in journalism’ and a strong tradition of ‘state intervention in defence of the ideological plurality of the media’ (Albuquerque, 2011: 74), alongside a robust connection between political institutions and the media (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). While this democratic corporatist model might have served ideological plurality, it has not served generic plurality. Journalistic logics are dominant even within parts of entertainment media (Bolin, 2007) and cultural critique (Riegert and Widholm, 2019).

However, public services’ responsibilities are often contested, and anyone can file a complaint if they ‘see or hear a programme that violates any of the rules and regulations applicable to TV and radio’ to the Swedish Press and Broadcasting Authority (2019). Rules concerning aspects like neutrality are genre-dependent, so comedic or satirical programming is rarely reprimanded. Despite this, comedy programmes are often reported, which ends up in the headlines (Doona, 2018). In other words, even if broader notions of satire are not novel within the Swedish media landscape, this contemporary form of broadcast news satire has not been common with any level of consistency. One of the few exceptions is the almost decade-old public service radio programme Tankesmedjan mentioned earlier, targeted on teens and young adults. Its longevity is not only due to popularity but also its lower production costs. Again, the small size of the media market is relevant: the contemporary American news satire role models are labour intensive, broadcasting at a fast pace and ‘monitoring’ vast amounts of news content. The public service programme Svenska Nyheter (‘Swedish News’, Swedish Television, 2018–) is the only current clearly identifiable example on television. It is broadcast once a week, with around 25 episodes broadcast in 2018.

As argued, further establishment of the genre in Sweden in part hinges on audiences becoming familiar with it. That, in turn, requires public service media to prioritize it, and/or commercial media to identify a large enough audience. This is important, as satire is one of the spaces where young adult citizens can feel invited to ‘play’ with the political (Jones, 2013a). In line with the idea of the carnivalesque mentioned above, Hariman (2008) argues that political humour functions to even out power imbalances between citizens and political elites. This ‘comprehensive available leveller’ promotes the notion of silliness as important to democratic sensibility (Hariman, 2008: 256; see also Hartley, 2010). Comedic forms entail ‘irreverent democratization of the conventions of public discourse, which in turn keeps public speech closer to its audience and their experiences of the public world’ (Hariman, 2008: 258). As the transgressive force of news satire depends on audience detection, factors such as the genre’s degree of establishment, political and journalistic cultures, as well as subjective constructions all matter. A growing body of research shows how the broader genre of political comedy is impacted by local contexts, however few focus on news satire audiences specifically (Bruun, 2012; Chen, 2013; Eko, 2015; El Marzouki, 2015; Kuipers, 2011; Rahimi, 2015; Ridanpää, 2012; Sienkiewicz, 2012; Tsakona and Popa, 2011).

Through the rise of news satire, American news journalism has received a lot of criticism: ‘the “real news” is in a state of crisis, faced with a range of challenges that include rapidly declining audiences, decreasing profits, and a wider loss of credibility’ (Baym, 2009: 382). The Swedish situation is different: Swedish interest in contemporary news satire seems driven by a will to engage with political issues in ways that conventional journalism per definition cannot – not because journalism is bad necessarily, but because it is so dominant. In a recent study comparing Swedish news and news satire framing, (Ödmark 2018) shows that satirical frames are more personal and emotional, and that the genre’s political relevance is equal to, or sometimes higher than that of conventional news programming.

However, the journalistic claim to epistemic authority is still robust in Sweden. Tendencies to question it have increased, but seem to relate to a general questioning of the very nature of objectivity, neutrality, civility and taste (Baym, 2013; Combe, 2015). That in turn relates to larger shifts from modern-era normative dichotomization between rational/emotional and information/entertainment (Coleman, 2013a; Dahlgren, 2009; Jones, 2013a, 2013b), also found in scholarly political entertainment research methodologies, resulting in a division between effects research and mostly qualitative, cultural and contextualizing approaches. As Young and Gray (2013: 522) explain, political entertainment research ‘sits enticingly in the middle’ – between journalism and mass communication research, and media and cultural studies. However, as argued by Jones (2013b), researchers should avoid treating audiences as receivers of isolated media texts; and continue to question dichotomization and idealized dutiful citizens. This is achieved through further contextualizing of existing audiences’ engagement – what they ‘do’ with media (Hermes, 2005) as mentioned.

In the present article, this is achieved through focusing on the ways in which regular audiences of news satire construct it as a genre, and navigate the wider range of media available. The concepts of genre work (Hill, 2007, 2019) and audience skills (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998) focus the analysis. Genre work ‘involves immersive and reflexive modes of engagement and experience’ (Hill, 2019: 75); and skills refers to how audiences gain valuable technical, analytical and interpretative skills when engaging with media (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998: 119f). In the next section, the study’s methods are treated in more detail, followed by the analysis section.

Method

The study utilizes qualitative data from 31 young adult individuals who regularly engage with news satire; 18 interviews and two focus groups with 6 and 7 participants respectively. The combination of interviews and focus groups provided insights into how social setting affects genre work. The focus groups collectively constructed fuller genre descriptions but with few disagreements, indicating that the interviews provided more detailed insights into individuals’ subjective constructions.

Studies define ‘young adult’ differently. Here, 18–35 is used, to match the target audiences of the programmes used for recruitment. Advertisements asked for 18–35-year-olds who regularly engage with Swedish public service radio programme Tankesmedjan and/or American cable television programme The Daily Show. These programmes share some traits: news satire focus, broadcast frequency (four/week) and target audiences (teens/young adults); yet they also differ: in media form, production country and mode of finance. They were chosen based on their popularity among young Swedes at the time (2014–15), with the ambition to cover different representational forms (television and radio). Participants were prompted to speak about other examples they considered relevant or similar to news satire, as part of the process of genre work. Examples from the world of film, graphic novels and podcasts as well as stand-up comedy were common, illustrating how audiences focused more on generic form (news satire vs. other forms of political comedy) than representational form (audio/video). For clarity, quotes from audience members will be marked with either ‘TDS’ (The Daily Show), ‘TS’ (Tankesmedjan), or both for audience members who followed both programmes. All participants are anonymized.

The snowball sampling method affects the selection of participants. Most of the participants had some form of higher education, and/or were students with or without part-time jobs. Most of them lived in medium-sized cities, although some came from bigger cities or the countryside. All of them were born in Sweden, but six had parents from other countries. In other words, the participants are part of an educated middle class, with a few of them being the first in their family to gain higher education. (About 30% of the Swedish population has some form of higher education; Statistics Sweden, 2019b.)

This method of recruitment further runs the risk of defining the genre a priori, which is problematic when the aim is to analyse audience genre constructions. The issue relates to the dilemma of genre studies (Neale, 2000), demanding a careful approach to data collection and analysis. To mitigate this, interviews and focus groups were semi-structured, creating a conversation-like situation to explore audience subjectivity. Transcript data was coded to identify discursive themes – a process guided by the theoretical focus and participants’ constructions. This first stage of coding, alongside the second stage, where codes where divided into sub-codes, served to represent and access similar passages, aiming for data retention over reduction (Bazeley, 2013). The third stage worked as a distillation process, resulting in analytical categories. After additional literature review and close reading of quotes, the categories were grouped into themes of genre and transgression, presented in the analysis.

Genre work and satirical transgression

Genre work is a constantly ongoing ‘act of classification’ (Hill, 2007: 85) that takes place in anticipation of engagement, in the moment of engagement, and when reflecting back on it (Hill, 2019). The concept builds on Ellis’s (2000) idea of ‘working through’, referring to the psychodynamics of how television helps us process the world through narrativized forms (Hill, 2019). Here, instead of psychodynamics, contributions from studies on the status and function of satire feed into genre work.

The audience members participating in this research share a common construction of news satire as authentic or honest in comparison to journalism – indicating an at times ironic disposition (Coleman, 2013b). As Combe argues, ‘satire problematises notions of certainty, stable reality, and absolute truth’ (2015: 298). Further, while newscasters should stay calm, unbiased and cordial, comedians are overtly personal and have emotional outbursts (Corner et al., 2013; Ödmark, 2018). This creates a type of emotional appeal that audiences see as authentic. As such, it adds something to the news:

you get this kind of edge in comparison to those who only watch the news or use their experiences – they have that, and I can learn from them, but then I have [news satire], this little extra layer that helps me come up with a thought or an opinion that is valid. (Freja, 22, social work student and shop clerk, TDS)

In different ways, news satire is constructed by participants as news-like, yet something other than news, more authentic and honest, which is contrary to the previously mentioned frustration with ironic modes of discourse (Day, 2011). Freja, who was the first in her family to go through higher education, had previously explained how she sometimes avoided news because it was boring – although this was something she took the blame for, rather than blaming on the news. She rejected labelling herself as politically interested, but appreciated political discussions. For her and others like her, having an ‘edge’ or ‘extra layer’ helped her form and discuss opinions.

Satirical transgression has a corrective function, ‘where there is a set of values that you are correcting toward’ (Hutcheon, 1994: 52). The use of irony in news satire works in various directions, often with a serious or ameliorative intent (Hutcheon, 1994) alongside the intent to entertain. These values are not only related to social and moral boundaries, but to genre, as visible in this quote from Tim:

That’s one of the reasons I stopped following daily news, it’s so extremely uninformative somehow. Something has happened, [but there’s] no background, no context. In Tankesmedjan that’s more established. Even if it’s done through joking they develop some kind of context around the event. (Tim, 28, Arabic studies doctoral student, TS; Focus group 2)

Here, news satire is constructed as conventional news’ corrective. It provides context and seems more informative to Tim and others like him.

While Freja, mentioned above, is neutral in her construction of news, participants like Tim are critical. As theorized by, among others, Combe (2015), news satire questions the very notion of ‘truth’, at least in the senses claimed by political elites and journalists. This has given rise to the concept of ‘truthiness’, coined by the retired satirical host character on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005–14). According to Meddaugh, truthiness ‘encapsulates the epistemological uncertainty of modern political thought’ (2010: 376) by ‘acknowledging news as representation rather than reality’ (2010: 386). This invites audiences to ‘overlook the explicit discursive situation in favour of the implied meaning-making possibilities’ (Meddaugh, 2010: 387). News satire hence becomes a resource for citizenship – especially so for young adults, whose need for context might be greater, and whose experiences might be limited.

In modern-era thinking, the civic subject was idealized as unencumbered by emotion (Dahlgren, 2009). This has created a kind of disconnect, an affective deficit (Coleman, 2013a) that is noticeable in different contexts. The emotional address of news satire seems to be one of the main draws for these Swedish young adult audiences, indicating that the genre’s popularity is related to this need, rather than such audiences representing some kind of postmodern ironic, disengaged youth. The audience members of the present study all voted, in line with the mentioned stable Swedish voter turnout. The parliamentary election in September 2018 saw 86% of 18–29-year-olds voting (just slightly lower than the general rate of 87.2%; Statistics Sweden, 2019a). Swedish researchers focused on young adults worry more about potentially reduced rates of broadcast news consumption (Wadbring, 2016) and a loss of collective forms of political engagement, such as party and union memberships (Amnå and Ekman, 2015; Dahlgren, 2009). It is not the ideals of democracy per se, that are being challenged in the shift from modern to late modern democratic ideas, but the citizen ideals and forms of engagement (Bennett, 2008). This is ‘felt’ by young adult Swedes, who might not have experienced but are aware of the image of the Swedish welfare state being built on wealth produced through modern ways of thinking, with engineering industries and paternalistic ideals of ‘social engineering’ being promoted (Blomgren, 2017; Djerf-Pierre and Weibull, 2013).

However, the transgressive force of satire is not only that it is explicitly emotional. It is also about its use of irony, allowing it to shift quickly between different both emotional and rational modes of address, as this exchange between focus group participants show:

Thelma:

It’s partly about having fun, but it’s also very emotional. I feel more engaged than if I’m reading an newspaper article. And I get more upset, but it’s still fun at the same time.

Tess:

Don’t you also get a kind of eye-opener? If you start thinking about it . . . . It’s easier, as you say, to become engaged in things if you’re being pulled into it, and if you get this news and you’re not just reading it quickly and then it’s gone. Rather, you’re pulled in and get, as you say, emotional. You get an eye-opener, sitting there thinking about it, and then that can lead to something. (Thelma, 20, media and communications student, TS; and Tess, 22, barista, TS; Focus group 2)

Participants acknowledge not only feelings of amusement, but becoming upset and more engaged. In the other focus group, these emotional modes were explicitly mapped:

Sally:

I feel all kinds of emotions. First you laugh at something, and then you’re like ‘What the hell, what kind of world are we living in?’ And then you almost become depressed instead, when you realize what you’ve been laughing at.

Susanna:

I don’t get sad or depressed from Tankesmedjan. If they hit the spot I feel really happy. I want to be a part of it. It’s like a filter. People say that if you experience something horrible, you then joke to make it better . . . it’s emancipatory for me. I was more depressed before. (Sally, 33, taxi driver, TS; and Susanna, 28, landscaping architect, TS; Focus group 1)

The emotional experience of engaging in a mix of serious and silly was linked to gaining new perspectives or realizing something, which was then constructed as important in relation to problematic or ‘horrible’ news stories. The quick shifts between different emotional states – happiness, relief and amusement, alongside feeling upset or depressed – helped audiences to engage with an issue in new ways. While conventional news engagement was linked to episodic accounts and solely negative feelings, news satire engagement was constructed as something beyond that, as a form of contextual and emotional corrective. It allowed them to dare to engage more fully. News satire engagement hence reminds audiences of the complexity and emotional facets of news stories and political issues. It ‘breaks through’ routine engagement with the news flow, daring audiences to consider issues more fully.

Transgression skills

Key to this argument is that humour engagement prompts us to regulate emotional distance (Morreall, 1987). The present data shows constructions of a sense of control over this distance, which is gained through a continuing engagement with news satire. This can be understood as a development of audience skills, which are kinds of competences valuable in themselves, as well as transferable to other parts of life (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998: 119f) – in this case, everyday practices of citizenship. There are three main skill sets: technical, meaning ‘an appreciation of how an effect is created’; analytical, which are abilities to conduct textual analysis ‘from within’ based on genre knowledge; and interpretative, involving abilities to holistically analyse a programme ‘from without the text’, through comparisons with other texts, ‘reality’ or everyday life (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998: 119). Genre work is a prerequisite for audience skills, and in the case of news satire engagement, they relate to satirical transgression, as in the following example:

[Tankesmedjan has] this style. It’s kind of roughly cut. It’s not so damn pretty. You’re supposed to hear the craft. [. . .] It provides some kind of authenticity. The radio listener is made aware of the fact that it’s radio. (Oliver, 27, barista, TS and TDS)

Oliver values Tankesmedjan for its authentic tone and rawness. He and others like him show appreciation of how forms and styles generate effects. They derived enjoyment from expectations based on this genre knowledge, as is clear in this quote from Dennis:

[News satire programmes] use sound or video clips that make you aware of the double standards of the powerful. [. . .] where someone is totally against something they were in support of three months earlier. It becomes very engaging, that’s when it’s at its most funny, when you’re waiting for them to . . . like ‘yes, now he’s saying this and this’ and then you know that the joke is being built up and there’s obviously going to be another clip saying something interesting. (Dennis, 29, journalism student, TDS)

These ‘transgression skills’ pertain to the two levels of news satire transgression mentioned: generic, and social and moral transgression. They are an important facet of Abercrombie and Longhurst’s skill sets, specifically applicable to transgressive media. They are ‘crucial to the way that audience members utilize the media to resource their imaginings’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998: 120), and this especially relates to the symbolic levelling function of news satire engagement. In the following quote, Therese explains how her understanding of Tankesmedjan has increased over time, which was a common theme:

[T]he more you listen to Tankesmedjan, the more you feel you understand. That’s fun somehow, I don’t think I would catch everything if I was listening to it for the first time. (Therese, 21, media and communications student and shop clerk, TS, Focus group 2)

Even if Swedish audiences have a generally high trust of news journalism, these young adults still need, in the words of Jones, ‘a means of re-establishing common sense truths to counter the spectacle, ritual, pageantry, artifice, and verbosity that often cloak the powerful’ (2010: 182). The data of the present study shows that while participants trusted journalists’ intentions, they were critical of news journalism and political elites’ claims of objectivity, confirming results from among others Schofield Clark and Marchi (2017 and Coleman (2013b). They were interested in politics and, as mentioned, believed in democratic ideals, but they rejected epistemological foundationalism. This was clear from how they constructed democracy and citizenship in positive terms yet also exposed the technical, analytical and interpretative skills mentioned above.

In order to avoid problems associated with the genre dilemma, issues of form were explored carefully during the fieldwork process. It became clear that while audience members might draw different conclusions while using their technical, analytical and interpretative skills, as part of genre work, the issue of representational form first and foremost came up as related to everyday practices. Tankesmedjan is a radio and podcast format, which meant that audience members engaged with it alongside something else, such as commuting or working. On the other hand, as the programme is available online, it was also constructed as something they would seek out and re-listen to. The Daily Show was less accessible at the time and therefore seemed to attract a more undivided attention, although some audiences did speak of second screen use. Those of the study’s participants who engaged with both Tankesmedjan and The Daily Show didn’t differentiate between them based on representational form. Rather, it was the similarities in their generic conventions that were brought up, such as the hypocrisy-exposing showing of contradicting news clips, or the overly emotional outbursts, that were the most recurring genre work themes, again indicating that perceived honesty is highly valued in news satire, in relation to conventional news programming.

Audience engagement is productive (Shimpach, 2011) and with news satire there is a double focus on producing pleasure as well as a ‘something else’ – knowledge, criticism, analysis and/or political identification. The genre work involved is clearly both affective and cognitive in character – which is the case with all genres, but made explicit here. Again, the ironic mode of discourse used in much of news satire is relevant, as it can ‘actively call upon audiences’ shared assumptions and predilections in an attempt to make members of existing discourse communities present to one another’ (Day, 2011: 145). In other words, genre work and the deployment of audience skills lead to identity production (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998; Hill, 2007). While audience members develop transgression skills subjectively – the present participants even claimed to engage with news satire alone rather than with others – this engagement still has a collective dimension, manifested through the voice of the comedic host and in the deployment of audience skills. Kumar and Combe (2015: 213) argue that satire engagement entails an ‘intensive transactive reader response dynamic’ where ‘satirists are especially attuned to precipitating an exact kind of partnership with their contemporary readership’. Jones (2013a: 401) argues for a view of satire as expressing ‘a different language’ that ‘combines aggression and judgment with laughter and play’, allowing audiences to engage in play by shifting ‘interpretative frames’. In other words, the will and ability to keep shifting frames and modes of engagement is an important aspect of transgression skills derived from news satire. Participants construct themselves as actively seeking these kinds of shifts, using words like ‘twist’:

A really good episode of The Colbert Report or Tankesmedjan often [keeps you updated], plus the humour. And they’ve thought about it, and that extra twist: ‘Here you go, here’s your news, and there are some opinions and some context.’ So that you feel well-informed. You’ve gotten your fibre, and you get to laugh. It feels damn good. I think that’s part of the appeal, actually. (interviewee Remy, 29, journalism student, TS)

In line with this, participants actively try to make sure they come into contact with different points of view. Here, the value of transgressive media and the associated skills becomes clear: audience members construct their own ‘transgression spectacles’ with which to view news and other forms of political communication. Mittell argues that ‘if we look at genres as culturally operative categories, then genre mixing becomes a site of heightened genre discourse’ (2004: 156). Audience members’ value transgression spectacles because they help them avoid one-sidedness, again providing a sense of authenticity. They value the ability to understand – and perhaps more importantly, be motivated to understand – different and opposing ideological and stakeholder positions, as well as various modes of discourse and contexts. In this sense, transgression skills are comparable to Dahlgren’s communicative skills. They build on ‘concrete, recurring practices’ (2009: 116), and ‘generate personal and social meaning to the ideal of democracy’ (2009: 117), which is especially important for young adults who might lack civic experience.

Unlaughter and transgression

While the above sections deal mostly with generic transgression, the following ones go into the transgression of social and moral boundaries. Here, Billig’s (2005) idea of ‘unlaughter’ helps us distinguish between the levels. While all participants of the study are ‘on board’ for news satire’s generic transgressions through their regular engagement, they do not always appreciate certain social and moral transgressions. Laughter and unlaughter represent two sides of a conceptual spectrum of humour reactions, and are distinguished from actual laughter, which is linked to many other social psychological and neurological functions (Scott et al., 2014). Unlaughter is the significant absence of laughter – an inability or unwillingness to experience or show amusement following humour engagement (Billig, 2005). Through the production of laughter and unlaughter, audience members construct moral and social boundaries related to processes of inclusion and exclusion. As Smith (2009: 148) points out, ‘[s]ome joke performances are meant to elicit differential responses – laughter from some and unlaughter from salient others’. Being able to reflect on one’s own reactions, and possible reactions of others more or less like oneself hence becomes another facet of the transgression skills that audiences gain through sustained news satire engagement.

Since humour is based in common frames of references, like shared values, culture or experiences (Critchley, 2002), it works both in an inclusive and excluding way. Parts of the studied audience actively problematize this. For them, unlaughter is their countering measure, an audience-led symbolic leveller, used when facing problematic satire. They subscribe to the idea, often raised in humour studies that humour can cause serious symbolic harm (Billig, 2005). This critical perspective relies on superiority theory, which posits that we laugh at that which reaffirms our sense of superiority (Critchley, 2002). Despite being one of the main theories on humour, it does not account for all kinds, like self-deprecating humour, which is common in contemporary news satire. The more neutral incongruity theory posits that we laugh at things that surprise us, or do not seem to go together (Critchley, 2002). But similarly it doesn’t account for all kinds, and completely disregards power, ignoring ‘relational and emotional aspects’ of humour (Malmqvist, 2015: 737). Hence, what makes some types of incongruity funnier than others might say something about ‘hierarchical social relationships and associated feelings of superiority and inferiority, legitimacy and illegitimacy’ (Malmqvist, 2015: 737).

The divide between the more or less critical perspectives on humour is found within scholarly debates as well as in audience genre work. The stances draw on overall understandings of the symbolic value and power of language and representation. Critical audience members construct news satire’s moral and social transgressions in relation to social hierarchy, often with the metaphor of ‘kicking downwards’ or ‘upwards’ to illustrate. Satire’s ‘directionality’ – who jokes about what/whom (Graefer and Das, 2017) – becomes a main point of assessment:

Kicking downwards, it just isn’t funny. It should be directed towards those in power, there needs to be this power-thing about it. Otherwise it’s not fun. [. . .] I think Jon Stewart consciously avoids making fun of voters. (Dennis, 24, journalism student, TDS)

Perspectives on satire’s directionality build on humour regimes, which are ‘unwritten rules stipulating who can joke about what’ (Kuipers, 2011: 69). They are specific forms of Foucault’s discursive regimes (1980), which govern ‘a non-serious and irreverent communicative mode that does not always obey the rules of “serious” discourse’ (Kuipers, 2011: 69). It was clear that several of the present study’s participants knew about the kicking metaphor, and various associated humour regimes.

As might be expected, there was a clear division between those who problematized this potential symbolic harm of news satire, and those who did not – some of whom made a point of it. For them, directionality ‘rules’ are meant to be broken:

Interviewer:

Do you ever think they cross the line on Tankesmedjan?

Several at once:

That’s what they’re there to do! Yes!

Interviewer:

Do you all feel that way?

Tamara:

There’s no limit!

Interviewer:

And do you ever feel uncomfortable?

Tamara:

I don’t think I’ve ever felt very uncomfortable. Last week [comedian] Jonatan [Unge] did this classic Holocaust joke. I laughed so hard, I felt like a bad person!

Interviewer:

So how does that work?

Tamara:

I think it’s OK. He can joke about it, because I don’t know, it’s difficult to say.

Interviewer:

Are there things you shouldn’t laugh at?

Tina:

I’m not so happy about racist or Nazi jokes. Really. [. . .]

Therese:

It’s different when it’s done by a pro. It’s done with a different kind of finesse.

Tamara:

I think so too. They’re supposed to do it, it’s their job, it’s what they do.

Tim:

This is kind of the game. Satire is supposed to kick from below, upwards, that’s why it often becomes left wing. I think [comedian Unge, on TS] does the opposite, he kind of kicks downwards onto those who are vulnerable, and that’s why it’s funny. Because you still know it’s satire, it’s so obvious that he really doesn’t mean what he’s saying [. . .].

Tamara:

I think it’s a lot about what tone they have when they tell the joke. Like deliberate pauses! (exchange in Focus group 2 between Tamara, 20, law student, TS; Tim, 28, Arabic studies doctoral student, TS; Tina, 23, history student, TS; and Therese, 21, media and communications student and shop clerk, TS)

While there is clear ambivalence and reflexivity, the participants use audience skills in order to justify transgressive satire. When discussing others’ unlaughter, some of the present study’s participants would signal annoyance. Unlaughter, according to this perspective, is contrived, strategic or unintelligent; something that potentially ruins news satire. As argued, incongruity and superiority are both relevant to the understanding of satire engagement, alongside on one hand subjective will and ability to calibrate unlaughter and distance, and on the other contextual factors. Audience members use laughter and unlaughter responses to mark what boundaries they consider problematic, necessary or ‘just’ funny to transgress. For some it is important to show awareness of symbolic harm, while others place importance in ignoring it for the sake of quality (using phrasing like ‘by a pro’ or ‘with finesse’). In this way they engage in boundary maintenance that polices the genre of satire, based in a more general struggle concerning power and representation.

A common explanation of this divide is that it relates to left- and right-wing ideologies, where the left emphasizes symbolic harm and the right is concerned with the freedom of speech. While the present study acknowledges that symbolic harm has been an issue in contemporary left-wing discourse, it is not unheard of on the right, at least not in the Swedish context. Ideological underpinnings of audience constructions have not been traced in this study, but it is clear that this connection, if it exists, is complex. There are certainly examples of all possible tendencies in the study though, meaning unlaughter seems to be ‘trans-ideological’. This is confirmed in one of the few other empirical studies with a similar contextualizing approach to humour engagement, by Graefer and Das (2017). For those concerned with potential harm caused by humour, there is an implicit top-down perspective on media engagement and meaning making. The opposite perspective problematizes offence, and argues that satirical transgression can combat unfair power distribution.

This analysis has showed that young adult audiences who maintain a sustained engagement with news satire gain transgression skills along the way. Audience members construct news satire as something different from conventional news, regardless of whether they are critical towards it. The emotional mode of discourse is highly appreciated, as well as the contextual or deeper understanding of news stories and political issues participants ascribed to their engagement with the genre. In subsequent sections, this is further developed and related to the theoretical frame and Swedish context; finally there is a short conclusion.

Discussion

Who is attracted to the carnival? The make-up of the contemporary news satire audience is something that needs further study, especially in relation to ideas of transgressive force. As shown by scholars like Bolin (2013) and Friedman and Kuipers (2013), education and class connect to taste in humour. Satire is especially associated with the ‘knowledge class’ (Hartley, 1996); and in Sweden, there is an ‘academic connection’ between satire and comedy on the one hand, and academic institutions on the other (Bolin, 2013: 268), which is true for some of the performers on The Daily Show and Tankesmedjan too. The present study’s exclusive focus on young adults who engage regularly with news satire, rather than a more general audience, has led to focusing on a group mostly belonging to the knowledge class. Yet, as the analysis also shows, there are still significant differences among the participants.

As media becomes increasingly on-demand, scholars have to find new ways to understand satire’s transgressive force, in terms of temporality. Bakhtin’s carnival was temporary, but as Sienkiewicz (2012) reminds us, digital media allows for a constantly ongoing carnival – which per definition then should lose its transgressive force. But the analysis shows that not even those regularly engaged with satire seem interested only in satire. The carnival is now more readily available and individualized, ongoing when audiences decide to engage, rather than when the elite allows it. Just as news satire needs the news, something to ‘bounce off’ to gain transgressive force, so do its audiences.

A key argument in the present article is that transgression skills become honed over time, and that this, in part, is contextual. Audience members develop a habit of assessing serious and silly intent, and of interpreting possible meanings of specific jokes or statements. This process depends not only on the genre work associated with satire but also takes place in tandem with contextual factors on different levels: on the subjective level, things like general media engagement, personal experiences, humour regimes and constructions of knowledge and citizenship; on the national level, things like the media system and political culture. This has been conceived of here as participants using transgression spectacles, which stresses how they draw on and appreciate shifting perspectives. Transgression skills potentially lead to increased confidence and, through that, a symbolic levelling with political elites and journalists suspected of oversimplification, bias or manipulation. Exactly how these skills are deployed in other parts of life needs further empirical study. However, the data of this study shows that sustained engagement helps audiences experience a deeper engagement with and understanding of news stories and political issues. As young adults are aided in levelling various ‘truths’ against each other they understand relevant contexts and stakeholders better, allowing them to be and feel empowered in doing so.

Ironically, such empowerment is potentially coupled with a kind of civic apprehension. Engaging with news satire and developing transgression skills might deepen engagement, but might also be associated with a critical construction of internal and external citizen efficacy. The potential problem here is not cynicism, which has a nihilistic layer (Higgie, 2014), but a limitation of empowerment. When news satire simultaneously confirms and challenges the status quo, bringing audiences into a routine of scolding news and political performance, news satire might ‘sometimes manage to enhance commonsensical views on political affairs rather than promote radical thinking’ (Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 2). Arguably though, the present article clarifies how, in the Swedish context, this is a greater risk without news satire, in relation to the mentioned legacy of paternalism and the connection between political institutions and the media, as well as the contemporary strong trust in public service. Again, Swedish news satire engagement corrects more towards the dominance and limitations of journalism, than towards its poor quality. However, this does not mean that news satire isn’t valuable in the Swedish context.

Engagement in news satire is becoming a more normalized part of Swedish national political culture. But since comedians strive to maintain transgression for comedic effect, total normalization is impossible. While audiences may become increasingly used to the generic transgressions of news satire, it is unlikely that moral and social transgression will lose its force in the same manner. As the present analysis highlights, the transgression skills gained from news satire engagement are part of what draws audiences in and keeps them engaged, mixing potential confidence-building empowerment and enjoyment, with ‘fibre’, unlaughter and criticism.

Conclusion

Contemporary news satire is transgressive in two senses: in relation to genre, and in relation to social and moral boundaries. This has been established throughout a number of mainly Anglophone textually focused studies. However, context-specific audience engagement in news satire is under-explored, which is problematic since humour is both highly contextual and personal. In the present article, context and subjectivity are emphasized through use of data from Sweden, a country with a small media market, high voter turnout and a democratic corporatist media culture. The aim was to analyse social subjects as audiences of news satire, in order to reveal the ways in which satirical transgression is articulated. The analysis exposed how Swedish young adult audience members do not necessarily construct satirical transgression as correcting poor journalistic quality, but rather its formal limitations and dominance. This was expressed as an appreciation of emotional modes of discourse and contextually situated news reporting. The main contribution of the present article, beyond the novel Swedish interview and focus group data, is that sustained news satire engagement allows audiences to develop ‘transgression skills’, which help them negotiate boundaries and symbolically occupy the same level as political elites. This process is stimulating, as satire is constructed as an emotionally authentic space for political communication, especially in relation to the dominance of Swedish journalistic certainty.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Joanna Doona is a post-doctoral researcher at Lund University, Sweden. She specializes in popular culture and citizenship, specifically focusing on audiences of political entertainment and satire. Her doctoral work in this area was awarded by the Swedish Association for Media and Communication Research (FSMK) and is currently being reworked for book publication. Her current research project, funded by the Wahlgrenska Foundation, uses the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship to understand young adult audience engagement in controversial public service satire.

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