The socio-cultural role of memes

Wiggins (2019) argues that memes are not only content carriers or culture replicators, but also visual arguments reflecting certain ideological practices. Shifman (2014: 7-8) in turn points out that a meme is a group of content units that includes the three following dimensions: content, form, and attitude. According to her, Internet memes are: “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance; (b) that were created with awareness of each other; and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users”. She underlines the importance of the last of these aspects. The principle of imitation and repackaging of content through mimicry and remixing are of key importance in meme transmission. It takes place under competition and selection conditions, which result in the evolution and the construction of many versions and meanings of individual messages (Shifman, 2014).

Internet memes, which present specific and metaphorical ideas by text, images, video and hashtags (Guenther et al., 2020), can take the form of frames. Frames in media messages are manifested in “keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information” (Entman, 1993: 52). Hence, the structure of the meme can favor framing. Frames are cognitive schemas that help to understand information in a certain way (Goffman, 1986). Their application is “taken from the collective experience of a given community” (Czyzewski, 2010: 25), which affects message encoding and decoding. Therefore, memes are perceived as an “inside joke” (Sroka, 2019: 30) addressed to a specific audience and requiring knowledge of its context. That is why cultural, political and historical references in memes determine their usefulness to recipients (Kozhamkulova & Foster, 2019) and their sharing to a wider audience. Memes as virus-like categories (Shifman, 2013) are disseminated via social media or dedicated portals to gain exposure and promote their creators (Denisova, 2019), and instill specific ideas in the recipient’s mind. They can also be modified by recipients who in this way support or oppose the presented viewpoint (Ross & Rivers, 2019), because frames do not have universal impact on everyone and need clarification. The interchangeability of tasks between the meme creator and recipient indicates the active role of the media audience in creating media and public discourse.

Participatory culture and Internet memes

According to Shifman (2013: 365), memes can influence “the mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups”. This is due to the sense of connection in the community and having a common goal, for example to respond to the threat posed by Covid-19 (Msugheter, 2020). Nowak (2016) notes that creating and sharing memes, apart from being entertaining, serves to discuss and comment on reality and to inform one another. Therefore, memes can be seen as products of participatory digital culture, characterized by “low barriers of artistic expression (…), strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations (…), informal mentorship”, and participants’ belief in the importance of their contributions (Jenkins et al., 2007: 3). Cultural participation mechanisms are often used to engage people through the Internet in socio-political issues (Jenkins et al., 2016). The interactive nature of social media gives the opportunity for participation and becoming aware of and engaging in national and international issues. Internet memes as user-generated content can also be a carrier of political comments and serve to include citizens in a public conversation or “be used as a tool for political meaning-making” (Kligler-Vilenchik & Thorson, 2016: 1997) as in Ross’ and Rivers’ studies (2017a; 2017b) on the role of memes in the delegitimization of the US Presidential Candidates in the 2016 election. This shows that memes are an important tool of online discourse, giving users a sense of commitment for creating and participating in it, and even influencing others.

Brown (2009) points out that an important feature of Internet memes is their connection to popular culture. Memes encourage forms of intertextuality, combining elements of popular culture and references to politics to emphasize dynamics of the real and virtual world (Shifman, 2014). While analyzing memes that were created and spread during the Covid-19 pandemic, MacDonald (2020) describes how people used intertextual references to popular culture to express their frustration against neoliberal dogmas. She focuses on memes commenting on inter-generational tensions resulting from various reactions to self-isolation. These issues were also highlighted by Pauliks (2020: 47), who noted that the so-called baby boomers are presented in memes, which are mainly created by “millennials (…) and zoomers”, as potential victims of Covid-19. Referring to examples of series and cartoons used in memes, he also writes about the impact of lockdown on citizens’ behavior, including panic buying. References to popular culture in memes indicate their important role within participatory culture – not only local but also international. Photos or quotes from movies or songs are often replicated in memes and put in a specific context, depending on the situation or place of residence of the members of the memetic community.

Objectives and research questions

The aim of the study was to analyze how Covid-19 was communicated and narrated through Internet memes, and how these presented the pandemic and actors responsible for fighting it.

To fulfill the research objectives, we created two research questions:

• RQ1: What thematic categories and actors did memes refer to most often?

• RQ2: What narrative was dominant in the memes?

Data sample and research procedure

In Poland, it is increasingly common for mainstream media to aggregate memes and categorize them thematically in galleries (Piskorz, 2015). The memes are gathered from social media but the criteria for their selection is not always stated. It can be assumed that the memes are chosen based on their popularity and entertainment value.

In this study, 1,763 memes on the subject of Covid-19 from six media were analyzed. We collected all the materials in June, but included memes created since March. We decided to analyze memes gathered (and identified as memes) by four media: “Polska Times” (331 memes), “Dziennik Polski” (277 memes), “Dziennik Zachodni” (93 memes) and “Glos Koszalinski” (231 memes). “Polska Times” and “Dziennik Polski” are nationwide media, while ”Dziennik Zachodni” and ”Glos Koszalinski” are regional. These media are daily newspapers and also have their own websites, which we analyzed in this study. Apart from meme galleries, these media have a meme tab on their websites and use hashtags, which allowed us to find the memes about Covid-19. We also analyzed memes from the most popular (based on the amount of likes and followers) Facebook (395 memes) and Instagram (436 memes) pages commenting on Polish politics and dedicated to Covid-19. In this way we chose “Sekcja gimnastyczna”, “Repostuj”, “Komemtator” and “Koronawirus memy” on Facebook, and “Umieramza Polske” on Instagram. We also searched for memes on Instagram using the hashtags “koronawirusmemy” (coronavirus memes) and “koronawiruspolska” (coronavirus Poland), choosing to analyze the memes with the highest number of reactions and likes, and excluding repetitive memes. Although the media are not study variables but a source of meme collection, we will note the differences between them in the results. A mixed methods research design was applied in the study, which helped us to analyze the memes in two steps. At the beginning we defined a list of six main categories of memes, divided into subcategories that helped to clarify the scope of each category. The categories and subcategories are described in detail in the results. We defined thematic categories based on an initial overview of the memes and pandemic-related topics discussed in the mainstream media, since we recognized that these could be reflected in the memes. After defining the categories that we included in the codebook, we conducted a content analysis of the memes to determine which of the topics was the most dominant, which is a part of the first research question. The first stage of research was quantitative and thus content analysis was a suitable method.

At the second stage, we analyzed the memes assigned to the most numerous thematic category. Every second meme from this category was selected and thoroughly examined using a new codebook consisting of four categories. We used content analysis with framing elements, which can be considered as a mixed method, and comparative narrative analysis, which has a qualitative character, to analyze the narration on the pandemic and the actors portrayed in the memes.

Some researchers (Sarna, 2016; Denisova, 2019) have studied the narrative potential of Internet memes. The qualitative analytic tool (narrative schemas) used at the second stage of the analysis in our study, was taken from the works of Frye (1957) and Wasilewski (2012). These narrative schemas are epic (or romance), satire, comedy and tragedy. An epic is a story about gaining a new identity and self-discovery. A typical example of it are stories in which the actor acts altruistically and heroically, and leads to a triumph of good over evil. Satire is the reverse of the epic scheme. The actor submits to the laws of the world, although he tried to fight them. Comedy is a story about being conformist and able to adapt to the prevailing conditions or to unite beyond differences, for example to come to terms with old enemies. Tragedy is an inversion of the comedy scheme. The actor realizes that the laws governing the world are ruthless, and the divisions between people are permanent and inevitable.

The rest of the categories included in the codebook used at the second stage of analysis are described in the empirical part of the article (“Actors in the Covid-19 memes”).

For testing reliability and inter-coder agreement we analyzed 50 memes at each stage of the study. Agreement was measured in kappa. At the first stage of the research the kappa coefficient was over 0.9, and at the second stage over 0.8, which shows that our rate of agreement was sufficient.

Specific topics and categories of memes

At the first stage of the analysis we assigned the memes to six main categories: free time, politics, services, work and study, bans and orders, stigma and exclusion. These were in turn divided into subcategories. “Free time” included topics such as leisure activities during the lockdown, quarantine effects (for example weight gain) and holidays and relaxation. “Politics”: presidential elections, anti-crisis ¹ shield, political events, media propaganda, stories on political actors and their actions. “Services” included memes about the police, fire brigade, health and sanitary services. “Work and study” concerned the remote and stationary forms of these activities. “Bans and orders” involved restrictions on public transport and border crossings, quarantine, ban on public assemblies, social distancing, shopping and limits on people in stores, closing of hair and beauty salons, entry ban to forests, and the mask wearing order. “Stigma and exclusion” included memes that criticized and ridiculed people from the regions in Poland and abroad that had the most cases of Covid-19 or were held responsible for the pandemic.

The most common thematic categories of memes were “bans and orders” (773 memes), “free time” (319 memes) and “politics” (297 memes). Table 1 shows that “bans and orders” was the most common category in all media. Some differences in the number of memes in certain media are noticeable. Although “services” is the least frequently presented category in total, it is only the least frequent in “Dziennik Polski” and Instagram. “Work and study” is the least frequently shown category by “Polska Times” (19 memes) and Facebook (5 memes), while “Glos Koszalinski” had the least memes about “stigma and exclusion” (3 memes). For “Dziennik Zachodni”, “services” and “work and study” are tied.

The category “Bans and orders” was based on government restrictions introduced from March 15^th to April 15^th (Website of the Republic of Poland, 2020). We found that the memes analyzed were usually published shortly after these restrictions were introduced. The “quarantine” order announced on March 24^th is the most common topic of the memes within “bans and orders” in four of the six media, which shows that there is a correlation between the meme subject and introduced restrictions, and that the subcategories were chosen accurately. The “quarantine” order was often related to lockdown and the necessity of isolation for people infected by Covid-19, as well as for Poles working abroad returning home. An example of such a meme is one where two aliens look out from an apartment window, with a caption stating: “When you invaded Earth, but you have to spend two weeks in quarantine…” (Polska Times, 2020c).

“Quarantine” (284 memes), “mask wearing order” (164 memes) and “shopping and limits on people in stores” (133 memes) were the most common subcategories in “bans and orders” (Table 2). In the case of “Glos Koszalinski”, however, “closing of hair and beauty salons” was the most common. In turn “public transport and border crossing” (11 memes), “entry ban to forests” (20 memes) and “social distancing” (33 memes) are the least used subcategories of “bans and orders”. Just as in the case of the main thematic categories (Table 1), some differences between the media are noticeable. “Entry ban to forests” was the least presented meme topic on Instagram (3 memes), compared to “public transport and border crossing” in other media. “Social distancing” was one of the two least presented topics of memes collected by “Dziennik Polski”. Despite minor differences between the analyzed media, a general trend in thematic categories of memes is observable.

Actors in the Covid-19 memes

At the second stage of the study, the memes related to “bans and orders” – the most common thematic category of memes – were analyzed through four categories: type of meme, dominant and secondary actors, and scheme of narration. These have in turn been divided into subcategories.

The category “type of meme” was related to its form (graphic-textual, graphic, textual). The “actor” category included information about the “dominant” and “secondary” actor. The “dominant actor” referred to the leading actor in the foreground of the meme, while the “secondary actor” would be an actor in the background, in a less important role. The actor could be, for example, a politician, an ordinary man, as well as uniformed (police, fire brigade) and non-uniformed services (health services). The “scheme of narration” included four types of plots: epic, satire, comedy and tragedy, and was used to analyze the actions of the actors. The form of the vast majority of memes was a combination of graphics and text. This “type of meme” was dominant in all the media platforms. The exclusively graphic memes came mainly from Facebook. A few consisted only of text, and they too came mostly from Facebook. The most common “dominant actor” in the memes is the “ordinary man” (164 memes), and this actor was dominant across all the media outlets (Table 3). The second in line is the “abstract actor” – primarily a cartoon character (62 memes). Third is the “movie and literature character” (59 memes). A considerable number of memes also concerned “uniformed service” (30 memes), “animals” (25 memes), and “politicians” (21 memes). For 174 memes a “secondary actor” could not be distinguished. The most common “secondary actor”, just like in the case of the “dominant actor”, is the “ordinary man” (95 memes). Next in order of frequency comes “movie and literature character” (37 memes), the “abstract actor” (36 memes), and “politician” (17 memes).

The results of the “scheme of narration” category are presented in Table 4 below. Next, we present examples of memes representing each of the plots. Based on Frye’s theory (1957), we decided to place memes that represent opposite narratives next to each other. As a result, Figure 1 shows memes with “comedy” (a) and “tragedy” (b) narration, and Figure 2 – “satire” (c) and “epic” (d).

The “comedy” scheme (177 memes) was clearly the most dominant. “Glos Koszalinski” was an exception where “satire” appeared more often. An example of the “comedy” scheme is a meme (Figure 1-a) from Pachelska (2020) which uses images from the anime series Pokémon.

The first part of it (with the caption “people with the flu”) shows a sick cartoon character, Pikachu, in bed. The second image shows characters running and has two captions. The first is “people with coronavirus”, and the second the lyrics from the series’ theme song: “I will travel along and across the land”.

75 memes represented the “tragedy” scheme, which makes it the third most common. An example of a meme in this category is one from Facebook (Koronawirus memy, 2020) where a young man is standing next to a bus stop holding a sign with the text: “Announce this coronavirus [its existence] in Poland, because this tension will be the end of me” (Figure 1 – b). It is a commentary on Polish authorities and public media not taking rumors about a Covid-19 outbreak in Poland seriously, when such speculations were reported by other media, and virus infections were recorded in neighboring states. The satirical scheme involved 96 memes and was the second most frequent type of narration. An example of this narration is a meme from Polska Times (2020b) (Figure 2-c) where a Polish police patrol stops an astronaut. The policeman asks: “What is the purpose of your trip?”.

The “epic” narration was the least common (42 memes in total). However, it should be noted that it was the least frequently used narration only in the case of “Glos Koszalinski” (4 memes), Facebook (11 memes), and Instagram (5 memes). In the memes from “Polska Times” the tragic scheme (5 memes) appeared the least often. For “Dziennik Polski” it was “satire” (8 memes), and “satire” and “tragedy” (both 4 memes) for “Dziennik Zachodni”. A characteristic example of an epic scheme is shown in Figure 2 – d, where the main message (“Stay at home”) is placed in the center of the meme from “Polska Times” (2020a).