Covidly humorous memes:
Covidly humorous memes:

coping, social cohesion and power dynamics of humour during the pandemic in Morocco

Summary/Abstract: The analysis of memes posted on Moroccan Facebook pages during the first wave of Covid-19pandemic shows that the use of humour by Moroccans is not only motivated by achieving mirthbut it also vehicles critical views about issues of common concern debated in the digital publicsphere. Some of these memes were used to cope with fear and uncertainty. However, most memesharboured mixed feelings about the situation and were used for social control and theexpression of conflict and resistance, addressing issues of behaviour, governance andcommunication. This article uses a social semiotic approach to analyse the collected memes(460 from personal and communal pages) as a multimodal discourse in terms of context, culture,and media affordances. This article contends that the study of these memes can be a key tounderstanding how Moroccans used humour to cope with danger and radical uncertainty, buildidentification and strengthen social cohesion. It also highlights the polyvocality of humour intimes of the pandemic and the gradual shift from inclusive, conformist and sympathetic humourto disparaging, exclusive and challenging humour as the pandemic lingered, consensus beganto crack, social control was challenged and injunctive norms were replaced by survival values.The results show how these memes are indicative of the way humour changes mechanisms andfunctions in terms of contingent motivations.

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