A humorous perspective to a frustrating time: Multimodal analysis of COVID-19 memes in the Lithuanian social networks

Abstract

The global threat of a new out-of-control pandemic, the daily growing number of coronavirus victims, stringent personal self-isolation regulations and fear of the future make people feel anxious, uncertain and miserable. In this situation social networks become highly valued communication channels through which one can obtain relevant information about the virus and exchange ideas about personal life and daily activities. Memes with their apt verbal messages and clear visual expression help people to see the humour of the situation and to maintain moderately positive outlooks. This article sets out to reveal the conceptualisation of COVID-19 in Lithuanian social networking. The analysis was employed to exhibit the dominant modes used to disclose the foremost aspects of the pathogen in the Lithuanian context. The theoretical framework provides an overview of modes and their multimodal nature. The subsequent sections are devoted to Lithuanian memes that are employed to communicate information about divergent aspects of coronavirus. Concepts, groupings and distinctive features of memes and their prevailing functions in social networking are included in the analysis as well. The empirical part of the paper puts an emphasis on the multimodal analysis of the COVID-19 virus as encoded in Lithuanian memes, drawing special attention to the multimodal expression in terms of its conceptualisation.

Keywords

• conceptualisation
• lithuanian social networking
• memes
• multimodal modes
• multimodality