Political Satire and Its Influence on the Youth Political Perception

This article is based on research that explored the different forms of political satire on social media and examined whether political satire has any impact on the political perception of the youths. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on. A mixed methodology was adopted in this research involving content analysis and survey. This study was conducted in Kuala Lumpur involving 50 respondents from the age of 18 to 40 years old. Content analysis was used to explore the forms of political satire. There were seven different forms of political satire analysed in this research, namely, political graphics by Fahmi Reza, political cartoons by Zunar, political anime from a Facebook page entitled “Bro, don’t like that la, bro”, memes from “SarawakGags”, “HarakatDaily” satirical news site, Dr Jason Leong’s satirical tweets on Twitter and parody videos by Douglas Lim. These themes were derived from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The study found that political satire has profound impacts on the political interests of the youths as it not only helps to increase their political understanding, it also presents political issues to the youths in creative and interesting ways. It is argued that political satire will grow faster and shape the political thinking of the youths especially. The direct effects of political satire, however, on voting inclination, are still inconclusive and need to be explored further.