W hen we first published these categories in early 2017 a number of people pushed back on the idea that satire could be included. Certainly, intelligent satire and effective parody should be considered forms of art. The challenge in this age of information disorder is that satire is used strategically to bypass fact-checkers and to distribute rumors and conspiracies, knowing that any push back can be dismissed by stating that it was never meant to be taken seriously. “Increasingly, what is labelled as ‘satire’ is hateful, polarising and divisive.” The reason that satire used in this way is so powerful a tool is that often the first people to see the satire often understand it as such. But as it gets re-shared more people lose the connection to the original messenger and fail to understand it as satire. On social media, the heuristics (the mental shortcuts we use to make sense of the world) are missing. Unlike in a newspaper where you understand what section of the paper you are looking at and see visual cues which show you’re in the opinion section or the cartoon section, this isn’t the case online. In the US, for example, you might be very aware of The Onion, a very popular satirical site. But how many others do you know? On the Wikipedia page for satirical sites, 57 are listed, and 22 of those are in 14 I N F O R M AT I O N D I S O R D E R the US. If you see a post re-shared on Facebook or Instagram, there are few of these contextual cues. And often when these things are spread, they lose connection to the original messenger very quickly as they get turned into screenshots or memes. In France, in the lead up to the 2017 election, we saw this technique of labelling content as ‘satire’ as a deliberate tactic. In one example, written up by Adrien Sénécat in Le Monde, it shows the step-by-step approach of those who want to use satire in this way.3 P H A S E 1: Le Gorafi, a satirical site, ‘reported’ that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron feels dirty after touching poor people’s hands.4 This worked as an attack on Macron as he is regularly characterized as being out-of touch and elitist. P H A S E 2 : Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages used this ‘claim’ and created new reports, including footage of Macron visiting a factory, and wiping his hands during the visit. P H A S E 3 : The videos went viral, and a worker in another factory challenged Macron to shake ‘his dirty, working class hands’. The news cycle continued. A similar situation transpired in Brazil, during the country’s election in October 2018. In fact, Ethel Rudnitzki wrote a piece examining the sharp spike in Twitter accounts in Brazil using puns related to news organizations and high-profile journalists.5 They described the accounts in their bios as parody S AT I R E O R PA R O D Y 15