The Onion and the geopolitics of satire

ABSTRACT

This article considers the representation of global events in The Onion, a satirical news publication. Drawing on a content analysis of headlines and news stories, the article offers a set of general conclusions about the publication’s geographical and topical focuses. When considered in aggregate, the headlines offer an implicit critique of the mainstream media and coverage of international events. The idea that The Onion is a critical voice is, however, subject to interrogation. The Onion should be recognized with other satirical outputs as a profit-oriented enterprise, with appeal to key demographics and growing connections to multinational corporations. Yet The Onion’s position is further complexified through its direct engagement with international actors who do not get the joke.

Notes

¹ Despite this, consideration of The Onion has been limited, particularly in comparison to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (though see Warner, 2008; Waisanen, 2011 on The Onion’s news network; and Marx, 2015).

² Here and elsewhere in the article we reproduce headlines from The Onion to provide grounding for our claims based on the publication’s own content.

³ In January 2016, Univision purchased a 40% stake in The Onion in order “to extend its digital reach and strengthen its portfolio of comedy outlets” (Steel, 2016). Later that year, Univision purchased Gawker Media, further diversifying the editorial voices under the company’s umbrella.

⁴ Germany has the largest readership among non-English-speaking countries.

⁵ The headlines were aggregated by country because this offers a known universe to sample. Each country was sorted individually via simple keyword searches from theonion.com. If more than one country was included in the headline or story text, the primary referent was labeled accordingly; then the secondary country was included, with all subsequent mentions also catalogued. Frequency counts presented in Table 1 refer only to primary countries, not to total mentions.

⁶ Though the article itself has been taken down, the Facebook comments thread is still available at https://www.facebook.com/theonion/posts/10150513892224497 (accessed 25 August 2016).