Satire or Fake News: Social Media Consumers' Socio-Demographics Decide

Ever since the surprising results from the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the subject of Fake News in our worldwide media consumption has grown steadily. On a smaller scale, mainstream media have taken a closer look at the relatively narrow genre of satirical news content. Ed Koltonski of Kent State, defines satirical news as designed specifically to entertain the reader, usually with irony or wit, to critique society or a social figure and invoke change or reform. Using field experiment, survey and focus group methods we sought to determine if media consumers' ability to differentiate between satirical news and fake news is tied to socio-demographic factors. We found that age, education, sex, and political affiliation predict understanding of "fake news" and satire. Furthermore, the ability to identify different types of misinformation when presented with screen shots from social media posts appears to be related to these variables. Focus group comments were also analyzed to gain a richer perspective on how participants interpreted the SMS screen shots. Using our primary research, we seek to determine if there is a correlation between social media consumers understanding of the difference between satirical news versus fake news and their varying socio-demographic factors.