Effects of COVID Memes on Mood and Self-Esteem
Researchers studied the effects of COVID memes on people’s moods, and classified several hundred memes by gender, age, and caption. Participants rated how cute they found the images, and reported positive or negative emotions. Findings indicated that COVID-based jokes can affect mood and self-esteem. Among the factors affecting memes are:
Content
The COVID-19 memes circulated online contain images depicting themes of death and isolation. The valence of these images was assessed using a number of criteria, including relatability, humor, and offensiveness. These memes were also categorized based on their relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study concluded that the use of COVID-19 memes is not associated with negative emotions, but rather with humor and relatability.
One study looked at differences in how individuals with and without anxiety interpreted internet memes relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a multi-group design, eighty participants with clinically significant anxiety and eighty controls rated 45 COVID-19 memes. Each participant was asked to rate the memes for their emotional valance, relatability, share-ability, and offensiveness. Additionally, participants were assessed for their difficulty in emotion regulation. The results of the study revealed that anxiety patients were more likely to judge these Internet memes as being funny, relatable, and shareable compared to non-anxious individuals.
Throughout the study, participants were asked to rate 45 pictorial memes on a 5-point Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Participants also rated the images on their personal relatability, funnyness, and offensiveness. They were asked to rate the images on how relevant they were to the COVID pandemic and how easily they could share them. These results were combined with data from a questionnaire on the COVID epidemic and the effects of proximity to the epidemic on the public.
Memes are often accompanied by captions with a humorous message. A recent study in the journal Psychology of Popular Media found that participants who viewed COVID-related memes were more likely to feel positive emotions than those who viewed non-COVID captions. This suggests that memes can be an effective tool in communicating information and coping with stressful situations. There is also some evidence to suggest that memes may even reduce anxiety.
Form
The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of memes about it are no strangers to the scientific community. As with all viral phenomena, memes can easily go viral with a simple click of a mouse. And while memes are often characterized by their content, they are also categorized by their valence, relatability, offensiveness, and share-ability. For this study, the form of COVID memes has been selected and classified as a sub-type of memes.
In this study, we looked at the effects of internet memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s overall emotional responses. We assessed whether the memes had the same effect on individuals who were experiencing high levels of anxiety compared to those who were less anxious. The memes were also evaluated for their humor and emotional valence. The results showed that memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to trigger anxiety among individuals with high levels of anxiety.
Memes that exhibit such characteristics are known as meta-pragmatic. These memes abound in the corpus and reflect similar parodic intent. Hence, we find nested voices in such memes. Such a trend is most apparent in corpus memes, which deviate from the dominant trends. It is therefore advisable to study such memes in the context of their social history. There are several forms of COVID memes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to affect Poland in 2020. The government there has implemented a ban on its dissemination, but memes were used to express various emotions and reactions to the virus. Memes are a common expression of participatory and digital cultures. In this paper, we study the impact of memes on Covid-19 communication through the form of digital participatory culture. Memes were collected from six media platforms and analyzed using comparative narrative and content analysis.
Sub-criteria of creativity
A study was conducted on the sub-criteria of creativity for memes. It evaluated how different types of memes differ in their creative content and how their creators use it. Twenty-four coders scored sixty memes; ten were chosen for further qualitative analysis and were selected based on higher scores on the five sub-criteria. Interestingly, two memes with low creativity scores were included in the comparison for a more nuanced analysis. The remaining 12 were subjected to perspectival analysis, considering different viewpoints present in the image and how they relate to each other.
The study of memes as creative artifacts opens new research avenues for researchers interested in creativity. Memes are often described as being characterized by a shared characteristic, whereas a good example of creativity might be a video game. The process of sharing a meme is itself a form of creativity. Thus, a meme can be both creative and humorous, implying that both creators and audiences share the same characteristics.
Memes are created by anonymous creators. Their purpose is to spread the message or information about a particular subject. Memes can reflect the collective internet culture, and their content may have different meaning to different users. Thus, the study should investigate the various ways in which memes can be viewed by diverse audiences. Further research is needed to understand whether memes are effective tools for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Memes are cheap to create, but they also sacrifice substance. A novel, a stand-up comedy, or a TV commercial may require more investment and talent to produce. However, these mediums do have an important purpose: they enable dialogues. Memes enable us to express our diverse opinions and views, which can be helpful in facilitating dialogues. A meme can also be an important tool in analyzing divergent viewpoints.
Influence of emotion regulation
The study found that internet memes related to the pandemic facilitated cognitive reappraisal, an important skill for managing and downregulating negative emotions. Such memes, which make fun of negative events, help people reduce the emotional impact of the pandemic. People with anxiety may use these memes to create a more humorous take on the negative experience. This process approaches statistical significance, and the effect is independent of expressive suppression.
The study also found that depressive memes had increased relatability ratings among depressed individuals, possibly because they are funny and easily shared. As a result, depressive individuals reported higher relatability ratings and sharedability of depressive memes, and were more likely to share them with others. The study found that depressive individuals were more likely to find depressive memes relatable, and that they rated their mood-improving potential higher than non-depressed people.
The study found that Internet memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic may serve as beneficial coping mechanisms for individuals experiencing anxiety. Memes related to this pandemic may also facilitate a humorous take on negative experiences and increase the perception of peer support through affiliation. However, future work will be needed to verify whether these memes are effective in alleviating anxiety. We hope that these findings provide useful insight into how internet memes are impacting the mental health of people.
The study found that individuals with depression were more likely to fixate on depressive memes. They also had higher total fixation counts and gaze duration. The findings suggest that these memes may influence attentional patterns in people with depression. However, future research needs to explore whether the effects of depressive memes are greater in people with depression than those without depressive symptoms. In the meantime, these findings point to the important role of emotion regulation in mental health.
