Memetising the pandemic: memes, covid-19 mundanity and political cultures

Abstract

It was late February 2020 when part of Northern Italy entered the first Covid-19 lockdown of the West. While stories of people fleeing quarantined areas soon made national headlines, the international news was suddenly reporting of coronavirus patients connected to Italy all around the world. Against this background, Italian social media started thriving with Covid-19 humour. On 9March the lockdown turned nationwide and became one of the strictest in Europe. This article addresses everyday memes of quarantined Italy as an instance of mundane memetics at a time of crisis. It investigates the leading discourses emerging from these memes to provide insight into the political culture that surfaces at the intersection between the ordinary of everyday social media uses and the extraordinary of crisis events. We combined digital methods and netnographic techniques to generate and analyse a dataset of over 9,000 Covid-19 memetic instances produced on Twitter by Italian publics during the first national lockdown. Our findings show that in early everyday pandemic memes the political stake did not manifest itself in the explicitness of values, attitudes, and knowledge tightly packaged in a purposeful and self-aware political culture. It rather surfaced in the form of a mundane political culture -one that was primarily performative, irrespective of any future political action, and marked by populist values.

(Social) Media Logics and Visualizing Climate Change: 10 Years of #climatechange Images on Twitter

“…Moreover, social media logic permits the embrace of new communication strategies as it is not bound by the same senses of professionalism as its traditional counterpart (Tsuriel et al, 2021). Indeed, different stakeholders, from major companies to individuals users, have taken to using the meme visual format (among other amateurish visual artifacts) to communicate a mixture of messages, a practice that is both accepted and frequently used in social media exchanges (Murru & Vicari, 2021). As news media have expanded their presence on social media platforms, a contested, hybridized logic has begun to emerge (Tsuriel et al, 2021).…”

Beyond laughter and smiles

“…In Spain, the COVID-19 memes dealt with the initial denial of the virus, loss of previous lifestyle and incredulity around the duration of the situation (Martínez-Cardama & García-López 2021). In the analysis of everyday political Italian memes in the COVID-19 times by Murru & Vicari (2021), five leading discourses emerged, viz. 'We are all in this together', 'Good citizens and rule breakers', 'Down with the leader', 'Down with the experts', and 'The (Italian) model does not work', indicating themes such as solidarity, rule-breaking, and failure of the institutions.…”

“…The researchers found various functions carried out by the humorous posts related to COVID-19, such as entertainment and public announcements (Abidin 2020), political critiques (Khan et al 2020;Murru & Vicari 2021;Nabea 2021;Chibuwe & Munoriyarwa 2022;de Saint Laurent et al 2022;Dynel 2022;Kadri & Jumrah 2022) (Dynel 2022), and transmission and reproduction of social and cultural norms (Lomotey 2020;Lotfy & Soliman 2021). Lemish & Elias (2020) found parental humour as an outlet for parents' anxieties and distress during the pandemic.…”

“…These posts also addressed elite corruption, policy bankruptcy and inconsistency, and Zimbabwe's failed health delivery system. Murru & Vicari (2021) argued that the COVID-19 memes identified good or bad civic behaviours, critiqued lawmakers, and institutions. These functions indicate that, in some of these studies, humour was utilised mainly to criticise governments' decisions regarding COVID-19 prevention and restriction in respective countries.…”

Controversial Behavior of Political Elites in Indonesia During the Covid-19

“…He has discovered that poor political policies are sources for criticisms targeting the elites. Meanwhile, some studies have discovered that creativity in the form of political memes could manifest political criticism (Astuti et al, 2019;Fatanti & Prabawangi 2021;Jakubowski 2021;MacDonald 2021;Munawarah et al, 2021;Murru & Vicari 2021).…”