“News may seem to offer viewers information, but satire does more. Satire asks the audience to take a piece of news and play with it, test it, reflect on it, and question it.”  – Sophia A McClennen (2011)

 

STUDIO PROMPT

To investigate comedy news production practices and to explore how comedy news may operate as alternative public pedagogy.

 

DESCRIPTION

News satire has continued to flourish in the post- broadcast era. However, it is important that we understand and continue to interrogate the ways that news satire and parody – or more broadly, comedy news – can productively blur the distinction between ‘news’ and ‘entertainment’. By offering critique of public figures and institutions, comedy news offers the possibility “to see the social and scientific anew” (Gray, Jones and Thompson 2009, p.9). This studio merged theory and practice through reading, viewing, discussion, and making of comedy news segments. Students were encouraged to play with the standard comedy news form, experiment with it, and potentially find ways to transform it as they researched and created a series of satirical/ parodic news artefacts.

 

In 2020 the studio was run for the first time in an online only capacity.