Pandemic memes: a discussion on their modes of study

Abstract

The paper discusses the methodology that has dominated studies of pandemic memes in the United States, Europe and Latin America. For the most part, they conducted content analysis without attending to their media placement, theories of the laughable and hypermedia circulation. Such omissions limit the understanding of the semiosis of the laughable construction of the pandemic as well as the pleasures and displeasures that memes proposed to contact it. The research conducted attended to these issues by analyzing memes about the pandemic in Argentina during 2020 and 2021, published in the five most read news portals, the two Instagram meme accounts with the most followers, two Facebook political satire groups and three WhatsApp groups of pro- and anti-vaccine friends. Among the results obtained were: 1) the identification of three dominant laughable regimes in the generation of memes (humor, degrading comical and laudatory comical); 2) the humor regime dominated during 2020, but in 2021 the degrading comical did so, entering the laughable construction of the pandemic in the logic of partisan polarization; 3) three phases were circumscribed in the hypermedia circulation, the first one, when the virus had not yet arrived in Argentina where the degrading humor prevailed towards the countries infected by COVID-19, the second one, with the arrival of the virus, where humor expanded and, the third one, in which satire and political humor gradually grew and disappeared from news portals, then from WhatsApp, Facebook and, finally, from Instagram.

The paper is part of the UBACYT project La mediatización en el entretejido de los vínculos sociales. Changes in the circulation of meaning from the new mediatization of individuals, collectives and institutions in contemporary society, directed by Mario Carlón.