He is the historian who left academia to pursue content creation at the advent of Youtube. He has a loyal fan in climate activist Greta Thunberg. And while his name, Giordano Nanni, may be unrecognisable, his ‘Honest Government ads’ aren’t.
Giordano’s humorous sketches about climate, politics and tourism in his distinguishable format have helped The Juice Media establish an 815,000-strong subscriber base on YouTube and attracted millions of views, achieving 'cut-through' on important issues that academic experts have struggled to match.
The satirical ‘Honest Government Ads’ were enough to have Ms Thunberg, who rarely sits down for a long interview, excited by a request to join him on his podcast.
"She very rarely does long interviews, if she does they're in print. So I was very surprised when she accepted," said Giordano.
"I realised during the course of the interview the reason she did it was because she was a massive fan of the work. I would be lying if I didn't say the main highlight was her giving us props."
If you haven’t seen them, ‘Honest Government Ads’ take the form of a mock government advert, that sit somewhere between a press conference and an airline-style information video - with a heavy-handed sprinkling of swearing.
Giordano, who has a PhD in history, was previously working as researcher at Melbourne University when he first used YouTube as a platform for his material almost 13 years ago. He had written a book on British colonisation when he started creating videos in the fake ad format more than five years ago.
The 'Honest Government Ad' on the COP26 Climate Summit. Source: The Juice Media
At the time, the Melbourne-based Giordano could see his work attracting more eyeballs on YouTube, and when it came down to choosing between the video platform and traditional academic publishing, he ignored his “grown up” sensibilities.
“You could publish your papers, and you could write a book, and it could be brilliant and exciting but academic voices are very heavily policed and hidden behind paywalls,” said Giordano.
“YouTube, on the other hand, was this amazing free information distribution platform.”
In a way, Giordano believes he’s still working in academia and is hoping to give scholars the leg-up they might need.
Last month, climate scientist and writer Joelle Gergis from Australian National University thanked The Juice Media in a tweet for all her new followers after Giordano gave her work a shoutout.
“Your videos are far more effective than anything climate scientists can come up with, but we do what we can,” Dr Gergis said in a tweet.
She went on to highlight some more of her work underneath in a thread.
From Australia’s Kyoto carbon credits to carbon capture and storage, one by one Giordano tried to debunk them with his irreverent explainers, using a pool of academic friends to refine the scripts.
“These are concepts that we hear about quite a lot, and politicians use them, but there's a limited literacy in public discourse about understanding what these things actually are.”
When there is limited literacy, that’s when misinformation and spin can be used, he said.
“These are complicated issues, and they can be dry. People also want to be entertained.”
He credits this model as the reason for the recent rapid growth in interest in the channel.
While The Juice Media already had a substantial following before the pandemic, the site's audience has grown about 40 per cent in the past year. That’s 311,000 additional subscribers and the biggest jump in followers since Giordano started the channel in 2008.
Viewers are of a wide age range, with a slight skew towards a male-dominant audience.
“Sometimes I see people saying, ‘you're my only source of news,’ - I don't think that's a good thing,” said Giordano.
“It's important to read widely, because, you know, everyone has a bias. And, I don't pretend not to have a bias.”
One recent skit, authorised by the Department of ‘Announcements and Photo Opportunities,’ took aim at the controversial AUKUS pact which left Australia in hot water with France. The script has a range of insults pointed at the Australian government. It’s a common approach.
Giordano Nanni (left), partner and voice-actor Lucy Cahill, actors Zoë Amanda Wilson and Ellen Burbidge. Source: Supplied
“To join AUKUS, we tore up a $90 billion dollar submarine contract with the French and didn’t even bother telling them in advance - AWWKUS,” an ever-smiling, nodding fake political spokesperson reads, likening “AWKUS” to awkward.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has maintained that the French were given fair warning before the deal was dumped.
If Labor wins in next year’s federal election, Giordano says he’d be just as ruthless in his scripts.
The ongoing series is fronted by Ellen Burbidge and Zoë Amanda Wilson and voiced by Giordano’s partner and voice-actor Lucy Cahill. While Giordano is tight-lipped on their earnings, he jokes that it’s a ‘family-run business’ that makes enough to pay the small team.
Satirical media takes many forms and is working for others, too.
The Betoota Advocate, a satirical site delivering punchy headlines and articles to its 889,000 Instagram followers has increased its audience by 200,000 users in the past year alone, according to Social Blade, a social media analytics page.
We have to give a shout out to the Feed’s own comedy team here, with their monologues and sketches emerging as some of the most watched of the Feed’s content during the pandemic.
Source: Instagram/@BetootaAdvocate
We also couldn’t leave out longstanding satirists The Chaser and The Shovel, which goes by the motto, ‘News you can believe in’.
So what is it that’s driving people to these sites?
The Juice Media fan Cathy Ngo, once a news writer herself, said the stress of writing during a pandemic left her sometimes avoiding traditional news sites and looking to satire to keep her up to date and cheer her up.
“Reading news headlines every day during the pandemic was fatiguing. Even though you know these satirical sites are not true, taking the piss, it just breaks the day up,” said the 34-year-old.
For Keith Nallawalla, he says comment sections on traditional media sites have been overtaken by minority groups spreading misinformation during the pandemic. This, he said, makes it hard to engage with others and has left him conversing on satirical pages instead.
“[The minority], they're most vocal in the comment sections and they just pat each other on the back… on other pages, it’s a bit more democratic.”
Underneath The Juice Media’s Youtube videos, viewers sing them praises.
“As an American, thank you for this,” writes one. “Every time I watch one of these it simultaneously destroys and renews my faith in humanity,” writes another.
“This is what democracy is about.”
