Satire, honey and tears: how The Onion and The Babylon Bee do satire

Although American news satire trends towards the left side of the political spectrum, satire is not unique to liberal viewpoints. Conservative news satire, published by outlets such as The Babylon Bee, lend evidence to the ability for right-wing views to be advanced using satirical methods. Despite political differences, existing comparisons of left- and right-wing news satire suggest a high degree of structural similarity. In contrast, qualitative content-based analyses suggest clear political biases which differentiate the satire from these sources. In this study, we compare left- and right-wing American news satire across different structural and content-based features using a combination of quantitative, computational, and qualitative approaches. Our results mirror those of prior studies, indicating similarities in terms of structure but not content. These results further speak to the importance of taking conservative satire seriously, as well as to the necessity of a multi-pronged approach when studying the complex nature of satirical discourse.