Abstract

This essay explores the new forms of online satire, and addresses these questions: how does political satire change in the Internet Age? What kind of functional consequences technological changes produce on the traditional relationship between satire and power? How do they impact on production and consumption practices? How on production of media contents? This study belongs to a larger project of web sphere analysis, with research conducted on a sample of 180 political satire videos posted on Facebook and YouTube during 2011. Implementing virtual ethnography methods, it considers two main dimensions of analysis: the relations between satire and both political power and media. Findings show as technological innovations and connected cultural changes redefine the original function of political satire, i.e. the author's role and ways of producing, sharing and consuming satiric contents.