The development of Internet memes as a form of online folklore in the era of the pandemic

Van Tinyan' Postgraduate Student, Department of the Russian Language and Methods of its Teaching, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) 117198, Russia, Moscow, ul. miklukho-Maklaya, 6, 6 1042218032@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

The life of society does not stand still. Its elements are constantly changing, and the forms are transformed. This is due to the fact that society does not exist in an ephemeral space, on the contrary, it is constantly influenced by various factors, both external and internal. All spheres of society are interconnected, and therefore the transformation of one necessarily leads to the transformation of the other. Thus, the changes that have occurred in the communication system in the modern era have made a significant contribution to the development of network folklore. With the development and emergence of modernization and globalization, people use various technologies to communicate. The growing demand for the transmission of huge amounts of data has made digital communication systems increasingly attractive. Most of the communications have become digital due to the advantages of digital communication over analog.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus infection at the end of 2019 was a real "shock" for the entire global society. The pandemic has affected all spheres of society and has generated many consequences that have called into question the past and familiar elements of public life. The pandemic became a trigger for the active formation of a "new normality", which in turn influenced the form of modern communications ^[11]. During the coronavirus pandemic, the world faced a global threat, which led to an increase in anxiety and nervousness among people. However, Internet memes have become an integral part of our lives and, perhaps, one of the tools to overcome fear and anxiety. In this article, we will look at how the Internet meme develops as a form of online folklore during the coronavirus period, and how important it becomes in our lives.

In the digital age, the Internet environment has become a fairly effective tool for interaction and information exchange between people. One of the most striking manifestations of communication in the digital age are Internet memes - short humorous images, videos or texts that quickly spread on social networks and messengers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Internet memes became even more popular, their number and diversity increased significantly.

Thus, it is necessary to consider the development of Internet memes as a form of online folklore during the pandemic. Also, within the framework of this study, it is possible to hypothesize that Internet memes as a form of online folklore help people to cope more easily with experiences during global crises, reflecting modern socio-cultural processes in a humorous form. It is also necessary to consider examples of popular Internet memes related to the pandemic and their role in shaping public opinion and perception of events. As part of this study, the development of memes as a form of Internet folklore will be conducted using a secondary analysis of scientific articles that are devoted to this topic, as well as content analysis of the Reddit portal.

Since memes are a certain form of humor, they should be understood in a certain socio-cultural context. In response to the rapid spread of the virus, many countries have begun to introduce quarantine measures, such as closing borders, banning mass events, closing schools and universities, as well as restrictions on the movement of citizens. In some countries, quarantine was more stringent than in others — for example, in China and Italy, the population was completely isolated from the outside world. This was done in order to slow down the spread of the virus and prevent overloading of medical facilities. As part of these measures, people were obliged to stay at home, and in case of violation of the self-isolation regime, administrative penalties were imposed.

Against the background of the events described above, people began to develop depression and anxiety. This was stated by the Belgian Institute "Sciensano" in one of its studies. So, according to their data, the number of people with increased anxiety during the beginning of the pandemic increased by 20%, and with signs of depression by 16%. Therefore, in an environment with a similar increase in negative states, the spread of memes as one of the humorous means is natural, because the psychotherapeutic properties of humor are said to be independently conducted by M. M. Abdullayeva and T. V. Artemyeva on two different samples of people. Within the framework of these two studies, a significant positive effect of humor on the human psyche was revealed.

It is worth noting that the study of network folklore or Internet folklore was actualized in connection with the massive development of modern information and communication technologies in the late 90s of the twentieth century. Examples of outstanding works on the topics of network folklore, virtual communication are the studies of Asmus N. G., Alekseevsky M. D., Lysenko S. A., Putilov B. N. and others (see ^{[2, 5, 7, 8]}). So, for example, according to M. D. Alekseevsky, the research of network folklore can be divided into four main areas, to which he referred the analysis of traditional genres with new content (for example, "tales about IT specialists"), network communication of representatives of new network subcultures, genres of urban folklore published on the Internet, as well as such forms of folklore that exist exclusively in the digital space (for example, photojabs or Internet memes) ^[2].

As part of the article "Consuming memes during the COVID pandemic: Effects of memes and meme type on COVID — related stress and coping efficacy. Psychology of Popular Media" the author selected memes from the Reddit platform and analyzed them. The author uploaded 22 thousand memes, of which he selected 480 for analysis. The aim of the study was to study the universality of the humorous component of memes about covid for respondents who took part in a survey on the topic of the article ^[13].

According to the results of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that memes in quarantine and isolation are key factors for maintaining mental health, both for an individual and for society as a whole.

In the work "Internet memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential copying mechanism for anxiety", 1000 people were selected for the study, then they were divided according to the criterion of anxiety. This was done in order to assess the effect of memes on the state of anxiety in people who have a tendency to this feeling and those who are not predisposed to it. As a result, the authors came to the conclusion that memes can have a psychotherapeutic effect on people with increased anxiety during crisis situations. It was also noticed that memes that link the topics of mental disorders and covid had a much better effect on the mental state of people with high anxiety ^[11].

In the work carried out by a research group from one of the Polish universities, the analysis was carried out using a combination of methods: categorization of memes, as well as statistical analysis. Among other things, they used such an analysis tool as "Goggle Trends". The authors also identified a pattern between the Covid-19 waves and the appearance of new memes, which can be seen in the drawings they presented. The authors of the study conclude that memes are the result of the adaptation of the human psyche to the stress surrounding them due to the abundance of negative news associated with excessive mortality as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The authors also claim that memes are able to act in this situation as a mechanism of escapism, since the surrounding reality does not cause positive emotions. The researchers noticed the greatest peak in the creation of memes during the beginning of the pandemic, which is associated with a situation of uncertainty in which the whole of humanity has fallen ^[12].

In this regard, Internet memes have become a significant part of modern communication, the purpose of which was originally humor.

In the work "COVID-19 in Memes: The Adaptive Response of Societies to the Pandemic?", the analysis was carried out using a combination of methods: categorization of memes, as well as statistical analysis. Among other things, they used such an analysis tool as "Goggle Trends". The authors also identified a pattern between the COVID-19 waves and the appearance of new memes, which can be seen in the drawings they presented. The authors of the study conclude that memes are the result of the adaptation of the human psyche to the stress surrounding them due to the abundance of negative news associated with excessive mortality as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The authors also claim that memes are able to act in this situation as a mechanism of escapism, since the surrounding reality does not cause positive emotions. The researchers noticed the greatest peak in the creation of memes during the beginning of the pandemic, which is associated with a situation of uncertainty in which the whole of humanity has fallen ^[16].

Gadi Alexander in "Smile! It's only Covid: Analyzing COVID-19 internet memes", also came to the conclusion that memes as a form of Internet folklore contributes to avoiding horrific events in the outside world by means of humor. In the period from the end of 2019 to 2022, the author collected more than 200 memes from various group chats in which he was a member, and then conducted the context of their content ^[12].

Fig. 1 – Meme "Witch Mountain"

The author of the study "Social Media Responses to the Pandemic: What Makes a Coronavirus Meme Creative" notes that during the pandemic there were no new images or speech constructions of a humorous nature that would take root, but one can notice a tendency to recycle old meme templates for a new reality. Figure 1 shows a similar meme template taken from the 2009 movie Witch Mountain. That is, at the time of the outbreak of the pandemic, this meme was 10 years old.

In a study conducted at the very beginning of the pandemic, "Memes of the virus: social criticism of the corona pandemic on the internet", memes themselves were compared with viruses, since some topics are able to receive wider publicity thanks to social networks. Also, among other things, thanks to memes, people get the opportunity to express their opinions on various events that took place in the world at the beginning of the pandemic ^[14].

If we take Russia, then we can turn to the analysis of memes during the pandemic by Archakova M. A. In her study, the author also considered the topic of fakes, as a result of which it was not possible to properly disclose the subject of memes during the beginning of the pandemic ^[4].

In addition to the analysis of foreign studies, an analysis of queries was also carried out using Yandex Wordstat. Based on the results of which it is possible, it is not possible to draw unambiguous conclusions in which period people were most interested in memes related to the pandemic. For comparison, we can cite Fig. 2. and Fig. 3. 

Fig. 2. — The history of impressions for the phrase "meme-covid"

Fig. 3. – The history of impressions for the phrase "meme-coronavirus"

According to these two figures, it is possible to notice that for one query, the search period fell on 2021, and on the other, the peak of searches for memes about coronavirus for March 2022. In addition, a third request was made to Yandex Wordstat "memes-Covid 19", and it repeats the peak of requests in March 2022 with a difference of a sharp jump.

In the Russian segment of the Internet, there were also no new memes that could have appeared during the coronavirus period, thereby repeating the trend of the rest of the world to process the material of the past years under a new reality. So, we can say that an Internet meme reflects a certain cultural code that includes a certain socio-cultural symbolism that is understandable to the mass consciousness. In addition, Internet memes are a crealized text, that is, a collective construct of a message consisting mostly of a picture and text that is transmitted from one subject of communication to another ^[6]. 

It is important to note that the development of Internet memes serves the development of the language as a whole, through the creation of occasional words, the destruction of speech cliches, playing on homo phenomena, game etymology, game anachronism and images ^[6]. All these techniques serve to form atypical speech forms, which, spreading over the Internet in the form of memes, are deposited in the mass consciousness and begin to be used in everyday life.

As part of the content analysis, memes on the topic of Covid-19 were searched on Reddit using the keywords "coronavirus", "Covid-19" and "pandemic". We analyzed the top 50 posts from each sub-editor about humor or mental health. Our sample size was 500 memes. We used thematic analysis to classify memes into six unique topics, including quarantine, social distancing, wearing masks, self-care, humor, and hope. 

The first category contained self-deprecating and sarcastic memes (examples: "When you spent so many years learning to avoid people, and they called it social distancing", "Coronavirus: Day 26 - I melted all the plastic in the house"), ridiculing topics related to the pandemic. They made up 54% of the total sample. The second largest category was social distancing (20%), which accounted for memes promoting social isolation or demonstrating creative ways to communicate with loved ones during quarantine. Examples of social distancing memes are "social distancing champion" or "6-foot creative distancing."

The third category (18%) were masked people, consisting of memes designed to encourage people to wear masks or make fun of those who decided not to. Examples of these memes include "My mask protects you. Your mask protects me" and "By wearing a mask, you become representatives of all races at the same time: ninja, Scorpion, deadly combat."Memes about quarantine (14%) emphasized the difficulties associated with staying at home, encouraged self-care and keeping in touch with loved ones.

 For example, "I have 99 problems, and now I have added snacks to the list" or "Don't forget to check out your extrovert friends. We not only survive, we thrive by practicing social distancing."The sixth and last category (2%) was hope, including memes that covered positive news and inspiring stories related to the pandemic.

 Examples include "Most patients with COVID-19 are recovering: 99% are hopeful" or "The world is facing COVID-19 together. We are united."Thus, from the analysis of studies that touch on the topic of memes during the pandemic, it can be concluded that memes as a form of online folklore have a massive psychotherapeutic impact by involving users in the context of the situation and the possibility of escaping from reality, and is also a new form of communication, creating new semantic constructions and forms within themselves words.

Memes as a form of online folklore create new linguistic forms that settle in the mass consciousness and culture. In addition, Internet memes have a massive psychotherapeutic impact due to the involvement of users in the context of the situation and the possibility of escaping from reality, a more positive view of the situation, which makes them popular.