Humor in Times of COVID-19 in Spain: Viewing Coronavirus Through Memes Disseminated via WhatsApp

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis, and its ensuing periods of confinement, has generated high levels of social stress on a global scale. In Spain, citizens were isolated in their homes and were not able to interact physically with family members, friends or co-workers. Different resources were employed to face this new stressful and unexpected situation (fitness, reading, painting, meditation, mindfulness, dancing, listening to music, playing instruments, cooking, etc.). Humor was one of the most frequent and widely used strategies in an attempt to keep perspective, deal with the seriousness of the situation and make the day-to-day more bearable. Humor is cultural: it varies from one country to the next and is part of the idiosyncrasies of a culture. It is deemed a particularly important feature of the Spanish personality. During the COVID-19 crisis, the main means or channels of communication were social networks. Throughout the confinement period, there was an excessive flow of humorous memes concerning Coronavirus and related shared experiences during the National State of Emergency decreed by the Spanish Government. The memes draw on irony, ingenuity and creativity to make a difficult and stressful experience more bearable. In this paper, a qualitative methodology based on ethnography research is used and ethnographic fieldwork is carried out on the memes disseminated through WhatsApp during the lockdown period experienced in Spain (14 March to 21 June 2020). The memes are considered to be an example of Netlore, digital contemporary folklore, and a theoretical framework on memes and humor is presented that discusses its different functions in order to channel grief, fear and suffering or to play down specific situations. A corpus of 644 memes that have flooded social networks are categorized and analyzed to witness how the Spanish have managed to bring out their humorous and creative side in difficult times even as they have criticized political decisions, let out their frustrations, described their new “normal” lives, interacted with others and anticipated the future.

Beyond laughter and smiles

“…In this systematic review, the majority of the studies (64 per cent) aimed to examine the message, i.e., the humorous post, focusing on the tools of humour employed in these posts (Dynel 2020(Dynel , 2022Khan et al 2020 2021) attempted to consider the following elements: source, i.e., the sender (author/sharer), the message, i.e., humorous post, and the receiver, i.e., social media users, in their studies. In some of the studies (12 per cent), two of these elements, i.e., the source and the message, were considered (Abidin 2020;Cancelas-Ouviña 2021;Inyabri et al 2021;Roig & Martorell 2021;Aronson & Jaffal 2022); whereas, in some (10 per cent), the message and the receiver were considered (Hussein & Aljamili 2020;Glǎveanu & de Saint Laurent 2021;Raj & Jayaprakash 2021;Chibuwe & Munoriyarwa 2022). However, none of the studies came up with any comprehensive and focused findings on the cumulative process of communication involving all aspects, viz.…”

“…The researchers found that intertextuality played a significant role in the structure of humorous posts (Cancelas-Ouviña 2021;Chłopicki & Brzozowska 2021;El-Shokrofy 2021). In the context of Poland, Chłopicki & Brzozowska (2021) argued that the memes illustrated the clash between the world of COVID-19 with that of either the time of the socialist regime that ruled in Poland between 1945 and 1989 or the fictional worlds of films (mainly comedies) produced in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which expressed contempt for the world of socialism.…”

“…Humorous posts related to various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, be it the lockdowns, work from home, school from home, etc., are all over social media. Many researchers, such as Kuipers (2020), Strick (2021), Sebba-Elran (2021), andCancelas-Ouviña (2021), have argued that humour functions as a potential coping mechanism in a pandemic situation. COVID-19 memes, according to Sebba-Elran (2021), give vent to anxieties and convey a communal need to protect and foster group solidarity.…”

“…COVID-19 memes, according to Sebba-Elran (2021), give vent to anxieties and convey a communal need to protect and foster group solidarity. Memes have been seen to be "very useful" and "socially speaking" by Cancelas-Ouviña (2021).…”

XIII Starptautiskais baltistu kongress “Baltu valodas laikā un telpā” : referātu tēzes

“…In this paper, I will examine Covid-19 pandemic-related linguistic landscape texts from Latvian cities (hereinafter LL texts), which are published on the internet (news portals; thematic groups of social networks, e.g., Facebook group "Skatlogu favorīti", Favorites of Window-case; and blogs), as well as articles, posts, and readers' responses to them (e.g., reactions, emoticons, written comments, memes, and moving gifs). I will use qualitative methods and content-based theories in data analysis: (1) the social semiotic approach (e.g., Randviir & Cobley, 2010;Kress, 2010), ( 2) critical discourse analysis (e.g., Wodak, 2009;van Dijk, 2015), and (3) humor and creativity theories on digital texts (e.g., Martin, 2007;Cancelas-Ouviña, 2021).…”