Skip to content
1981
Deadly Serious: Pandemic Humour, Media and Critical Perspectives
  • ISSN: 2040-199X
  • E-ISSN: 1751-7974

Abstract

Social media played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic both as a tool for communicating COVID-19-related messages and as a platform for sharing lighter moments during the distressful time. My article focuses on these lighter moments in the form of internet memes. My interest is on internet memes shared by the cyber public in Malawi. I contend that besides the humour, the memes carry insightful commentary on and criticism of society’s reaction to and handling of the pandemic. The memes poke fun at petrified and distressed Malawians, at some politicians who took advantage of the pandemic to further their own interests and how the outbreak widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Some sinophobic memes accused China of infecting the world with virus. My methodological and theoretical approaches are based on netnographic studies and theories of humour (nature and function) respectively.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jams_00074_1
2022-06-01
2024-12-14
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Abbas, A.,, Yousof, E.,, Kamel, M.,, Selim, S.,, Ahmed, S., and Ismail, Y.. ( 2020;), ‘ Mobile apps and memes in the era of COVID-19 pandemic: Could this make quarantine more acceptable?. ’, American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research, 9:4, http://dx.doi.org/10.34297/AJBSR.2020.09.001409. Accessed 10 August 2021.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Abidin, C.. ( 2020;), ‘ Meme factory cultures and content pivoting in Singapore and Malaysia during Covid-19. ’, The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, Special Issue: ‘Covid-19 Misinformation’, 1, https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-031. Accessed 12 August 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Adegoju, A.. ( 2015;), ‘ Humour as discursive practice in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election online campaign. ’, Discourse Studies, 17:6, pp. 64362.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Bakhtin, M. M.. ( 1984), Rabelais and His World, Bloomington, IN:: Indiana University Press;.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bischetti, L. C.,, Canal, P., and Bambini, V.. ( 2020;), ‘ Funny but aversive: A large-scale survey on the emotional response to Covid-19 humor in the Italian population during lockdown. ’, Lingua, 249, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102963. Accessed 23 January 2021.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. da Silva, P., and Garcia, J.. ( 2012;), ‘ YouTubers as satirists: Humour and remix in online video. ’, JeDEM, 4:1, pp. 89114.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Dundes, A.. ( 1987;), ‘ At ease, disease: AIDS jokes as sick humour. ’, American Behavioral Sciences, 30:3, pp. 7281, https://doi.org/10.1177/000276487030003006. Accessed 4 April 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Freud, S.. ( 1960), Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, New York:: Norton;.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Gal, N.,, Shifman, L., and Kampf, Z.. ( 2016;), ‘ “It gets better”: Internet memes and the construction of collective identity. ’, New Media and Society, 18:8, pp. 1698714.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Harshavardhan, V.,, Wilson, D., and Kumar, M. V.. ( 2019;), ‘ Humour discourse in internet memes: An aid in ESL classrooms. ’, Asia Pacific Media Educator, 29:1, pp. 4153.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Isnaniah, S., and Agustina, T.. ( 2020;), ‘ “Covid-19” meme in social media: Study of Roland Barthes semiology. ’, Bahtera: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa dan Sastra, 19:2, pp. 35178, https://doi.org/10.21009/bahtera.192.010. Accessed 13 July 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Kamkwamba, W., and Mealer, B.. ( 2009), The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, New York:: Harper Collins;.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Kertcher, C., and Turin, O.. ( 2020;), ‘ “Siege mentality” reaction to the pandemic: Israel memes during Covid-19. ’, Postdigital Science and Education, 2:3, pp. 58187, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00175-8. Accessed 5 May 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Kozinets, R.. ( 2006;), ‘ Netnography 2.0. ’, in R. Belk. (ed.), Handbook for Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, Cheltenham and Northampton:: Edward Elgar;, pp. 12942.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Kozinets, R.. ( 2014;), ‘ Netnographic analysis: Understanding culture through social media data. ’, in U. Flick. (ed.), Sage Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, London:: Sage;, pp. 26275.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Kozinets, R.. ( 2015;), ‘ Netnography. ’, in R. Mansell, and P. Hwa Ang. (eds), The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, New York:: Wiley;, pp. 18.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Macdonald, S.. ( 2020;), ‘ What do you (really) meme? Pandemic memes as social political repositories. ’, Leisure Sciences, 43:1&2, pp. 14351, https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2020.1773995. Accessed 1 August 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Ministry of Health (MoH) ( 2021;), ‘ Covid-19 daily info update. ’, MoH, https://covid19.health.gov.mw. Accessed 12 August 2021.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Morreall, J.. ( 2009), Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humour, Chichester:: Wiley Blackwell;.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. National Statistical Office (NSO) ( 2020;), ‘ The 2019 national household survey on access and usage of ICT services in Malawi. ’, National Statistical Office (NSO), http://www.nsomalawi.mw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=232:national-household-survey-on-access-and-usage-of-ict-services-in-malawi-2019&catid=3:reports. Accessed 22 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Ngwira, E., and Lipenga, K. J.. ( 2018;), ‘ A country laughing at itself: Malawian humour in the digital age. ’, English Studies in Africa, 61:2, pp. 2135.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Public Health Institute of Malawi ( 2021;), ‘ Covid-19 update. ’, Public Health Institute of Malawi, 27 April, https://www.malawipublichealth.org. Accessed 20 September 2021.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Robert Mugabe Quotes ( 2020;), ‘ Imagine surviving all this unprotected sex only to die from an unprotected handshake. ’, Facebook, 20 March, https://www.facebook.com/rgmquotes/posts/pfbid0f5V43SR9Vm6E9viBfVvsT2goS1Wvc8mUHcUskF6y5EwmFQMP8NAPWVHKS6ZQTLpjl. Accessed 14 April 2022.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Schild, L.,, Ling, C.,, Blackburn, J.,, Stringhini, G.,, Zhang, Y., and Zannettou, S.. ( 2021;), ‘ “Go eat a bat, Chang”: An early look on the emergence of sinophobic behavior on web communities in the face of COVID-19. ’, https://idrama.science/papers/sinophobia-2020-04-08.pdf. Accessed 21 July 2020.
  25. Shifman, L.. ( 2007;), ‘ Humor in the age of digital reproduction: Continuity and change in internet-based comic texts. ’, International Journal of Communication, 1, pp. 187209.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Stieger, S.,, Formann, A. K., and Burger, C.. ( 2011;), ‘ Humor styles and their relationship to explicit and implicit self-esteem. ’, Personality and Individual Differences, 50:5, pp. 74750.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Taecharungroj, V., and Nueangjamnong, P.. ( 2014;), ‘ The effects of humour on virality: The study of internet memes on social media. ’, 7th International Forum on Public Relations and Advertising: Media Impacts on Culture and Social Communication, Mahidol University, Bangkok:, 13–15 August.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Tella, A.. ( 2015;), ‘ Humour generation and multimodal framing of political actor in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaign memes. ’, European Journal of Humour Research, 6:4, pp. 95117.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Vargha, K.. ( 2018;), ‘ Creativity and humor in the online folklore of the 2014 elections in Hungary. ’, Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 74, pp. 724.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Ngwira, Emmanuel. ( 2022;), ‘ Viral giggles: Internet memes and COVID-19 in Malawi. ’, Journal of African Media Studies, 14:2, pp. 20929, https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00074_1
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jams_00074_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/jams_00074_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): catharsis; cyber public; humour; netnography; Sinophobia; social media
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error