Digital Folklore in the Age of Pandemic (Based on the Collection of Social Cartoons of the Center for Social and Political History of the State Public Historical Library)

Abstract

The article offers a systematic analysis of “quarantines”—small comic works dedicated to the pandemic and lockdown, which are transmitted in the Internet in digital form. The analysis is conducted on 3082 social cartoons collected by the Center for Social and Political History of the State Public Historical Library (CSPH of the SPHL) during the lockdown in March-June 2020. The quarantines are typologized into three categories: images (collages, original and doctored photos), aphorisms, and creolized texts (caricatures, comic strips, posters, and memes). A quantitative analysis of the collection allows to conclude that the vast majority of quarantines are creolized texts—a visual unity of image and caption. By analyzing the frequencies of the main themes represented by the quarantines (with the help of hashtags), a rating of thematic groups is compiled, where the topics “Lockdown” and “Masks” take the leading place. In all thematic groups, there are motifs both critical and loyal to the social norms of the pandemic, as well as plots and images of varying degrees of metaphoricity. Based on the analysis of quarantines collected by the Center for Social and Political History, as well as a critical review of modern studies devoted to digital folklore of the pandemic period in Russia and abroad, the main socio-cultural functions of a quarantine are singled out: overcoming social stress, adaptation to the new conditions of physical and social existence; interiorization of social norms of the pandemic. The conclusion is that quarantines have become a special, artistic method of selfhelp for society in a situation of social extreme.