with the headline “Georgia Lawmaker claims that a Chick-Fil-A employee told her to ‘go back’ to her country” — suggesting that in the context of a tweet by President Trump aimed at four new congresswomen to ‘go back home’, the satirical site may be twisting its jokes to deceive readers.6 In a November 2018 Washington Post profile of renowned hoaxer Christopher Blair, the complexities of these issues surrounding satire are explained.7 Blair started his satirical Facebook Page in 2016 as a joke with his liberal friends to poke fun at the extremist ideas being shared by those far right. He was careful to make clear that it was a satirical site and it included no fewer than 14 disclaimers, including “nothing on this page is real”. But it kept becoming more successful. As Blair wrote on his own Facebook page: “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back.” Increasingly, what is labelled as ‘satire’ is hateful, polarising and divisive. CHAPTER 2 False connection As these examples show, while it might seem uncomfortable to include satire as a category, there are many ways that satire has become part of the conversation around the way information can be twisted and reframed and the potential impact on audiences. When headlines, visuals or captions don’t support the content. 18 I N F O R M AT I O N D I S O R D E R 19

Select target paragraph3