Meme Chronicler: Representation of the Pandemic News Agenda in the Runet Memetic Content

Abstract

Internet memes are among those digital phenomena of the 21st century that, despite already being sufficiently studied in the humanities, never tire of surprising researchers with their growing functionality and new genre forms. Another confirmation of this was the coronavirus pandemic, which not only spawned a huge array of memetic content, but also demonstrated new qualities of these communicative units, in particular their ability to build relevant narratives that reflect the news agenda. The paper examines the semantic, stylistic, and imaginative characteristics of memes that reproduce the «coronavirus everyday life», and also raises the question of the emergence of a new genre in the Runet discourse, which can be designated as a meme-series.

This paper fully presents the study the primary and brief results of which were published in electronic form on the Ridero platform; see: Shomova S.A. (2021) From medieval engraving to pin-up: the visual series of the pandemic period as a new genre variation of media content. In: When the «crown» is heavy: digital media in the pandemic era. Moscow: Publishing solutions. Ridero. Chapter 6. (In. Russ.)