Satire as uncertain territory: Uncertainty expression in discussion about political satire, opinion, and news

This study integrates satire literature and uncertainty-based theories in order to introduce more theoretical organization into the political communication and discussion literature. In doing so, the main goals of this study are (1) to bring conceptual organization to various types of political messages (i.e., satire and news), (2) to show how and why satire, in particular, is linked with uncertainty, and (3) to examine the extent to which satire and news can arouse uncertainty and encourage discussion of uncertainty in political conversations. Four types of political media messages (traditional news, opinion news, juvenalian satire, and horatian satire) are used in a computer-mediated discussion experiment to answer the study’s hypotheses. Results show that uncertainty differed across political messages (i.e., satire aroused more uncertainty) and uncertainty was expressed in discussion.