Fake accounts, real activism: Political faking and user-generated satire as activist intervention

Abstract

In this article, I explore user-generated political satire in Italy by focusing on fake political accounts. By fake accounts, I refer to humorous social media accounts that satirize a politician or a political organization through impersonation. I investigate political faking and user-generated satire as an activist intervention. Through in-depth interviews, I explore the motivations and the relationship with Italian politics of a sample of fake account creators. The results show that most of the satirists interviewed here consider satire as a form of activism and even those who do not, still recognize the subversive nature of satire. Furthermore, a majority of the interviewees have complex biographies of activism that predate the creation of the fake accounts. For a smaller number of them, the fake accounts have also provided new possibilities to engage in activism away-from-keyboard (AFK).

When Climate-Induced Change Reaches Social Media: How Realistic Travel Expectations Shape Consumers’ Attitudes toward the Destination

“…Given that consumers seek information from various (online) platforms, UGC plays a key role in travel planning (Cox et al 2009) and is also perceived as more objective and credible (Ayeh, Au, and Law 2013a; Hautz et al 2014). Conversely, the recent public debate of fake news in politics (Ferrari 2018) and fake profiles and content on UGC platforms (Ayeh, Au, and Law 2013b; Choi et al 2016) can also increase potential visitors’ doubts about online postings. However, users tend to post more realistic content than DMOs or other companies, so it is important to investigate how consumers respond to this more realistic content.…”

Sincerely Fake: Exploring User-Generated Political Fakes and Networked Publics

“…The sample can thus speak to the broader spectrum of fake political accounts, although it is worth mentioning that the creators of one of the most famous fakes-L'Apparato-decided to not take part in the study; other relevant accounts could not be included in the research due to a variety of reasons, including their unwillingness to participate. As detailed in Ferrari (2018), the motivations of the creators of these fake accounts are ludic, social, and political: these satirists are not profitdriven, but rather see the fakes as a form of activism. Casalegglo used a Facebook profile as a placeholder, without sharing content.…”

Global Trolling: The Case of “America First”

“…There is research on specific cases of trolling from the USA [7,8], UK [9,10,11], China [4,12], Israel [6,13], Italy [14], New Zealand [15], and Russia [16]. Collectively, these studies raise a question about the extent and nature of trolling globally.…”

“…Trolls are driven by motives that range from political and ideological to malevolent to personal enjoyment [5], revenge and thrill seeking [6,24]. While early research focused attention on deviant behaviors and malevolent trolling, the focus has now shifted to satirical, ideological, collective, and political trolling from countries around the globe [4,12,14,16]. With regards to this paper, studies of collective, ideological and satirical trolling cases of American, Chinese and Russian trolls are most applicable [4,12,14,16,22].…”

“…Scholars report on ideological and political trolling from around the globe through examples from China, Italy, and the USA [4,12,16,22]. The examples include: 1) ideological trolling by the Kremlin troll that is believed to be paid by a foreign government -in this case Russia [16]; 2) fake political accounts, which are humorous social media accounts; Italy uses satire as a form of activism [14] by assuming fake identities and taking advantage of anonymity on online platforms; 3) likewise social and political ideology drive trolling behaviors in the USA, using satire and humor [21,22]. Political satire, in any media, implies the act of mocking conventions [25], and thus seems to serve trolling actions very well [22].…”