The very first exercise we did was for everyone to say how they get their news and what comedy TV shows they watch. Overwhelmingly, most people get their news from social media and online sources. This encourages me to think of the shift in a reader’s trust in different sources of information. For my parent’s generation, they relied heavily on newspapers and watching the evening news; if I show them an article online or a news clip on YouTube, they would not easily trust it compared to information from traditional media.

Shifting the focus onto satiric news shows, the readings emphasise that their purpose is “not negativity but positive change” (Gray, Jones & Thompson, 2009). Ruth also highlighted this by saying that good satire is provocative and seeks positive change. After being shown various clips from late-night satire news shows hosted by Seth Meyers, Michelle Wolf and SNL, I considered the most likely criticism about this format. Perhaps most evident after Michelle Wolfe urged on the audience whilst a graphic of a flock of sheep overlaps on the screen. “Time to clap!” she exclaimed. A lot of people have issues with the fact that these satire news shows does the thinking for the audience, and forms an opinion for the audience without much further critical thinking done by the audience themselves. I often agree with this sentiment when watching some of these clips on YouTube. In some instances, in order to set up a joke, the issue could be simplified. This leads me to my thoughts after the first lesson:

Does satire work?

In the case of satire news shows, there is a distance that is created between the issue and the audience through the jokes and the laughter. It is difficult to push for a positive change when the audience may see an issue on the satire news shows and think “this famous person is already onto it, I don’t have to do anything.”

We will see how this opinion change over the course of this semester.