Humour and Biopolitics: RuNet Memes during the Pandemic

Abstract

The authors focus on the specific channel of people’s reaction to official biopolitics employed by the Russian federal and regional authorities during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this period RuNet digital audiences created, disseminated and consumed lots of humorous memes in the form of photo and video images, posters, collages, rhymes and jokes, targeting various official policies, including official morbidity and mortality statistics, sanitary measures, the timing of lockdowns, recommended remedies, current distant education technologies, etc. The commented collection of the digital pandemic memetics provides an opportunity to test various humour theories, as well as to assess theories of visual information reading.