Parody of Political Satire on Facebook Page

Abstract

This quantitative research Parody of Political Satire on Facebook Page is to study how politics is represented in different satirical ways, based on the contents of political Facebook pages by gathering data posted on the Cat Egg X page that contains various satirical contents of political news. This page is divided into two main areas of analysis depending on certain contents that reflect particular political situations, and tactics or different degrees of parody. The duration of the study was 6 months from January 1st, 2019 – June 30th, 2019, a total of 166 posts.

The results are analyzed using interpretive and comparative methods on each present content in order to understand the context of society along with the meaning of symbols, posted and used to describe related events. Accordingly, the first part of the analysis, which is a reflection of political events finds that there are 7 types of common content which are the behavior of politicians, people who are related to politics, political parties, elections, government policies, important current events and institutions which are related to politics. Another part is the strategy of parody and satire. It finds that there are 4 different types of parody which are trivialization (joke modification), comparison and exaggeration, and inversion (role switches). All content reflects distrust toward the government in the public view. This is because the period of the official election was held after the coup in 2014, and the nation has been ruled by the National Council for Peace and Order, known as the military junta for 5 years. The election demands the qualifications of candidates. Political activists and people who criticize their views holding on the principles of democracy on social media, which is considered a public sphere to freely express their opinions based on freedom and independence. Instead, these people are controlled and arrested by invisible power or laws resulting in changing the expressions of political opinions to avoid conflict by using “Political Caricatures” which are adapted each content to be jokes, and by changing the content to be easily accessible in order to reduce tension in content without annotations. This allows readers to imagine and perceive in their own ways which is the beginning step of fighting through diverse thoughts in a political way by the use of advanced technological innovation as an incentive in the long run.