On November 28 and 29, 2012, ten scholars of political parody and satire and six parody/viral video producers met at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania to share their expertise, discuss the democratic uses of parody, and develop a set of strategies to guide the successful use of political parody in generating positive democratic outcomes. The symposium, P6: Professors and Practitioners Pontificate on Political Parody and Persuasion, was cosponsored by the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware and funded in part by a grant from the Omidyar Network’s Democracy Fund. The meeting served as a follow-up to the yearlong Annenberg Public Policy Center online project, FlackCheck.org. FlackCheck.org, the sister site to its companion FactCheck.org, is an educational site that uses entertaining visual formats and humor to inform the public and debunk false political claims. The November conference began with a keynote from Trevor Potter, former head of the FEC and lawyer to Stephen Colbert and his satirical—though very real—super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.
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