COVID-19 humor in Jordanian social media: A socio-semiotic approach

Abstract

The Coronavirus has wrapped the whole universe with a mood of fear, depression, anxiety and loss of hope. It has made countries of the world, west and east, rich and poor, advanced and underdeveloped, all engaged in a common task: facing one ‘invisible’ enemy; the pandemic. The consequences are conditions that, the UN states, have not been experienced since the horrific conditions of World War II resulting into heavy toils in the number of victims. The normal course of life has now changed. The pressing demand is the adaptation to various new measures including curfews and the restrictions on mass mobility. These conditions managed to alter the long-established rhythm of daily course of life. This paper focuses on how Jordanian social media is contributing in overcoming Pandemic anxiety burdens and offering relief. For this purpose, the study undertakes a two-track task. A survey is compiled to elicit social media users' opinions concerning the effect of humor on people's well-being. Participants were given questions on humor and were also asked to give their impressions on a selection of 20 humorous figures attached as a link within the survey. 1274 participants responded. Likert's five-point scale was adapted to analyze the data. Second, the paper examined these twenty selected memes and caricatures extracted from Jordanian social media websites. The study applied Kress and Leeuween's approach of social semiotics. The objective is to identify and analyze specific semiotic patterns in COVID-19 related caricatures and memes in Jordanian social media in order to demonstrate how humor can be used as means of softening the grim mood created by the Pandemic through examining the data from a social-semiotic perspective.

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

“…Future research could compile a systematic review of articles published on this theme ( Abidin, 2020 ; Carpio-Jiménez et al, 2020 ; Flecha et al, 2020 ; Hussein and Aljamili, 2020 ; Kertcher and Turin, 2020 ; Sola-Morales, 2020 ; Norstrom and Sarna, 2021 ), analyzing how COVID-19 is viewed through memes in different countries to see if there are some common aspects in the memes circulating worldwide and to highlight the differentiating elements by identifying features that cause the same reality to be perceived differently.…”

Dialogic Communication During Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis on Technoparks’ Social Media Usage in Turkey

“…With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout the world in the early days of the year 2020, people have had to change their routines in their daily and work life Connectist: Istanbul University Journal of Communication Sciences, 2021, 60, 1-26 by staying at home (Hussein & Aljamili, 2020) for lockdown and quarantine reasons in order to prevent the spread of the easily contagious virus. This has led them to spend most of their time on online platforms for an instant and easy connection (González-Padilla & Tortolero-Blanco, 2020;Silahtaroğlu, Baykal, & Canbolat, 2020;Katz, Callorda, & Jung, 2020;Socialbakers.com, 2020;Banga & Willem te Velde, 2020) with their families and friends as well as their colleagues and clients.…”

“…Previous studies, especially the findings of the Men et al 's 2017 and Chen et al 's 2017 studies, motivated the author to analyze the dialogic characteristics of the social media accounts of technoparks, particularly during the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Turkey. This study examines the social media platforms of the active technoparks in Turkey, since studies within Turkey and across the globe pointed out that, with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, people started to spend more time on the Internet, especially on social media platforms (Banga & Willem te Velde, 2020;Nielsen et al, 2020;Cukurova Expres, 2020), in the first three months of the pandemic (Silahtaroğlu et al, 2020) • as a form of escapism from high levels of fear and anxiety resulting from said pandemic (Hussein & Aljamili, 2020;Katz et al, 2020),…”

Covid 19 Memes in Social Media Instagram

“…(Purwaningrum, Saifullah, & Sudana, 2020) also pointed that memes can demonstrate the arrangement of delivering ideas, comments, and critical thinking in cyber space. (Hussein & Nabil, 2020)in his concern on caricature and memes, argues that humour caricatures and memes can be considered as a tool to decrease depression and fear due to covid 19 pandemic. Therefore, cyber space makes people more openly express and even criticize the unsuitable policy of the government, in a term of memes of covid 19 pandemic.…”

“…To demonstrate the response, creators usually create memes equipped by some simple words, proper diction, and humour. In addition, humour can entertain people to be healthier in mentality and emotionally, especially during this pandemic (Abel, 2002;Hussein & Nabil, 2020).…”