COVID-19 in Memes: The Adaptive Response of Societies to the Pandemic?

ABSTRACT: COVID-19 expanded rapidly throughout the world, with enormous health, social, and economic consequences. Mental health is the most affected by extreme negative emotions and stress, but it has been an underestimated part of human life during the pandemic. We hypothesized that people may have responded to the pandemic spontaneously with increased interest in and creation of funny internet memes. Using Google and Google Trends, we revealed that the number of and interest in funny internet memes related to COVID-19 exploded during the spring 2020 lockdown. The interest in coronavirus memes was positively correlated with interest in mortality due to COVID-19 on a global scale, and positively associated with the real number of deaths and cases reported in different countries. We compared content

SUBMITTER: Skorka P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9566158 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature