These pages have been designed for teachers looking to introduce their students to mockumentary discourse, and researchers who are looking for more information and resources on mockumentary. The material here draws from the wider research conducted for the books Faking It: Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality and its follow-up Television Mockumentary: Reflexivity, satire and play in televisual space.

A definition of mockumentary is included below. Other pages can be accessed through the navigation bar above. There are some suggested introductory exercises for teachers, a bibliography of mockumentary literature provides a starting point for researchers, and there is a selected list of online sources useful for searching for more detailed information.

A definition of mockumentary

Mockumentaries are media texts (radio programmes, short films, feature films, television programmes, and any number of online material) which 'look' and/or 'sound' like documentaries or reality-based media (the term 'reality-based media' refers to the range of ways in which reality is appears within contemporary media, including news and current affairs programming, 'hybrid' forms such as nature documentary, drama-documentary, and the proliferation of television formats such as reality TV, docusoaps, reality gameshows, makeover programmes, situation documentaries, reality sitcoms and so on). Mockumentaries, then, are fictional texts which appropriate the aesthetics of the documentary genre or other reality-based media.

• They use the same codes and conventions as documentary and related media, such as an authoritative voice-over narrator or on-screen presenter, apparently 'real' footage of events, archival photographs, interviews with apparent 'experts' and 'eyewitnesses', and the other familiar ways of representing reality.
• Mockumentaries 'work' because of the assumptions and expectations that we as viewers have of representations of reality. When we see a text that looks and sounds real, we tend to begin reading and responding to it as factual. We may in fact read 'real' texts in very different ways to fictional texts.
• At some point a mockumentary will 'flag' that it is fictional. This might happen through promotional material, or become obvious when watching the mockumentary itself, or not be revealed until later (as with mockumentaries designed to be hoaxes)
• Because they demonstrate how easily all of the codes and conventions we associate with the conveying of 'reality' can be faked, mockumentary can often cause us as viewers to consider why we place so much faith in the accuracy and integrity of genres such as documentary.
• Mockumentary, then, is a fictional form which can encourage us to reflect on the nature of the documentary and related genres, and on the 'privileged' position that we tend to give such factual texts.

This 'reflexivity' toward documentary (and related media) is something that all mockumentaries share, because they are taking such common and taken-for-granted forms and playing with them.

This definition, however, needs more nuance. Many filmmakers and television producers who create mockumentaries are not interested in trying to 'raise our consciousness' in relation to documentary, or in forcing us to think more deeply about how we read and interpret different forms of the media. We need to consider the variety of reasons why media producers themselves are using mockumentary forms;

• simply as a novelty or stunt style;
• for promotional purposes;
• as an innovative dramatic style;
• or for parody and satire.

Many popular mockumentaries are simply looking to create humour by using the documentary as the 'straight person' in a comedy double-act. They make an absurd subject funnier by taking an apparently rational and sober perspective on it. Others incorporate a number of popular culture references, often building a satiric commentary on other media. Some of the more interesting mockumentaries can create quite 'layered' forms of experience for their audiences.

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