’Ignorance is strength’ : Representing COVID-19 Facebook experts in Danish textual news satire
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Danish textual news satire constructs its social critique of the many Facebook users whose comments during COVID-19 imitate expert statements in dis-regard of authoritative health science statements. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, UNESCO has proclaimed a disinfodemic of emotive narrative constructs and pseudo-science on the internet and espe-cially in the social media. As with the ruling Party’s paradoxical slo-gan “ignorance is strength” in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984,we sense a similar trend of the public disinfodemic, but studies of this paradox in satirical publications are scarce. Thus, the goal here is to scrutinize this enigma exemplified in an article in the Danish spoof news online media of RokokoPosten in which such experts are parodied in a kind of “doublethink” style which begs critical reflec-tion on social media credibility. Hence, such textual news satire may potentially provide a vaccine against post-truth delusions of health science as it provides immunity against the disinfodemic by its own causative agents
Info
Journal Article, 2021
UN SDG Classification
DK Main Research Area
Humanities
