Open AccessBRINGING THE PANDEMIC HOME: MEMES AS LOCAL POLITICS AT TIMES OF GLOBAL CRISIS
Author(s) -
María Francesca Murru,
Stefania Vicari
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
selected papers of internet research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2162-3317
DOI - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12215
Subject(s) - politics , appropriation , thriving , media studies , social media , sociology , political science , narrative , social science , law , philosophy , linguistics
It was late February 2020 when part of Northern Italy entered thefirst Covid-19 lockdown of the West. While stories of people fleeing quarantined areas soonmade national headlines, the international news was suddenly reporting of coronaviruspatients connected to Italy all around the world. Against this background, Italian socialmedia started thriving with Covid-19 humour. On 9 March the lockdown turned nationwide andbecame one of the strictest in Europe. By focusing on Covid-19 memes of quarantined Italy,this article explores the local - and mundane - appropriation of memetic practices, in bothits cultural and political dimensions. We combined digital methods and netnographictechniques to generate and analyse a dataset of Covid-19 Twitter memes produced by Italianpublics during the first national lockdown. This allowed us to follow the circulation - andevolution - of memetic practices, explore how cultural fabric contributed to differentdimensions of meme production and categorise the emergence of political expression. Ourfindings show that Italian pandemic memes had a primarily affective function fed by past andpresent pop culture, local or sub-local stereotypes and popular public debates. Wherepolitical expression did emerge, it was never particularly innovative or new because it wasthere to mark previously established communal belonging driven by populist narratives morethan to initiate contentious practices. Ultimately, this work suggests that memeticpractices can highly intertwine with the geographically or linguistically local and point tothe need for contextual approaches able to enhance our understanding of digital practices asshaped by local publics.