Humour Scandals (Hu-Sca): A cross-national analysis of humour controversies in Europe (Hu-Sca)

Spanning from TV news satire and print cartoons to irreverent memes and sarcastic musings on social media, political humour is a recurrent feature in our public culture. In today’s open, interactive, and emotionally-charged media
environment, humour is used by political actors across the ideological spectrum for gaining attention, luring
supporters and marking political cleavages. This research project brings together an interdisciplinary team from six
Una Europa universities to investigate mediated humour controversies or “humor scandals” in the European public sphere. Humour scandals, like the Danish cartoon scandal (2005) or the attack on Charlie Hebdo (2015), are public
controversies about transgressive humour. Integrating research on political scandals, media, politics and humour, our project aims to identify and compare the most notable humour scandals in Belgium, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain between 1990-2022. We focus specifically on humour scandals related to populist politicians and parties who often use (provocative) humour to draw attention and distinguish themselves from mainstream politics.