Bernie Sanders had criticized the billionaire who paid off Morehouse College graduates’ student debt was another falsehood that Republicans fell for. A satirical article that suggested that Sen.
#Babylon bee meme series
One of the most widely believed falsehoods was based on a series of made-up quotes attributed to Rep. Of the 23 falsehoods that came from The Bee, eight were confidently believed by at least 15 percent of Republican respondents. Members of both parties failed to recognize that The Babylon Bee is satire, but Republicans were considerably more likely to do so. If we zero in on The Babylon Bee, a few patterns stand out. Then we computed the proportion of Democrats and of Republicans who described these statements as “definitely true.” On one survey, The Babylon Bee had articles relating to five different falsehoods.įor each claim, we asked people to tell us whether it was true or false and how confident they were in their belief. In fact, stories published by The Bee were among the most shared factually inaccurate content in almost every survey we conducted. Satirical articles like those found on The Babylon Bee frequently showed up in our survey. By the end of the study, we had measured respondents’ beliefs about 120 widely shared falsehoods. We then asked a representative group of over 800 Americans to tell us if they believed claims based on those trending stories. Others were fake news reports meant to deliberately mislead readers. Every two weeks, we identified 10 of the most shared fake political stories on social media, which included satirical stories.
Our study on misinformation and social media lasted six months. Otherwise, it’s pretty easy to mistake a satirical message for a literal one. You have to understand what normal political rhetoric looks like, and you have to recognize exaggeration. You have to be familiar with the political issue being satirized. Many satirical websites mimic the tone and appearance of news sites. The truth is, understanding online political satire isn’t easy. Sometimes satire is easy to spot, like when The Babylon Bee reported that President Donald Trump had appointed Joe Biden to head up the Transportation Security Administration based on “Biden’s skill getting inappropriately close to people and making unwanted physical advances.” But other headlines are more difficult to assess.įor example, the claim that John Bolton described an attack on two Saudi oil tankers as “an attack on all Americans” might sound plausible until you’re told that the story appeared in The Onion. The Onion, a popular satirical news website, is misunderstood so often that there’s a large online community dedicated to ridiculing those who have been fooled.īut now more than ever, Americans are worried about their ability to distinguish between what’s true and what isn’t and think made-up news is a significant problem facing the country. However, researchers found that conservatives regularly misinterpreted Colbert’s performance to be a sincere expression of his political beliefs.
On his popular satirical news show The Colbert Report, comedian Stephen Colbert assumed the character of a conservative cable news pundit. People have long mistaken satire for real news. We discovered that many of the false stories weren’t the kind that were trying to intentionally deceive their readers they actually came from satirical sites, and many people seemed to believe them. We identified news stories-both true and false-that were being shared widely on social media. Over the last several months, we’ve surveyed Americans’ beliefs about dozens of high-profile political issues. Our team of communication researchers has spent years studying misinformation, satire, and social media. Obvious.” A few days later, Fox News ran a segment featuring The Bee’s incredulous CEO.īut does everyone recognize satire as readily as French seems to? In July, the website Snopes published a piece fact-checking a story posted on The Babylon Bee, a popular satirical news site with a conservative bent.Ĭonservative columnist David French criticized Snopes for debunking what was, in his view, “obvious satire.
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