HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD MEME SERIES

Taking a break to view and share bits of cute or funny pop culture commentary in the form of COVID-19-related memes can be a quick and easy way to connect with others and address pandemic stress head-on through laughter. The pandemic, with its accompanying restrictions on travel, work, and socializing, has been an uncommonly stressful time.

Instead, it likely depends on the specific type of media message you are consuming, the type of person you are, and the situation in which you are consuming it. Together, these studies suggest that media use is not always the stress-inducing experienceВ or waste of timeВ that it is sometimes portrayed to be. In her surveys of college students and breast cancer patients, people who choose media for stress management reported it as an effective way to cope. For example, my collaborator Robin Nabi has found in previous workВ that using media вЂ“ whether television, books, or social media вЂ“ is one of the top strategies for managing stress. This work adds to a growing body of research demonstrating that people use media to help them deal with stress. ItвЂ™s possible that exerting more effort thinking about the topic could lead to mentally rehearsing ways to copeВ with the related stress, instead of avoiding it entirely. Those who saw COVID-19-related memes also reported thinking more deeply about the memes and their meaning вЂ“ what media psychologists call вЂњ information processing.вЂќ More information processing was related to more confidence in their abilities to handle pandemic-related stress. People who viewed memes about COVID-19 rated themselves as less stressed about life during a global pandemic. There seems to be value in reframing something that is constantly stressful and scary into a more approachable topic by using humor. Moreover, we found that participants who rated themselves higher on the positive emotion scale were also more likely to feel confident in their ability to handle the stress associated with living through a global pandemic. In short, viewing a few cute or funny memes вЂ“ regardless of their topic вЂ“ provided a quick boost of positive emotion for many people. For instance, people who saw memes scored, on average, a 4.71 on our positive emotions scale, compared with an average of 3.85 for those who did not see a meme. People who viewed just three memes rated themselves on a 1-7 scale as calmer, more content, and more amused compared with people who didnвЂ™t see the memes. We asked particularly about how they felt about COVID-19 and their ability to cope with pandemic stress. Then, no matter which set of content our participants saw, everyone next answered questions about how they felt at that moment. A third group saw an image-free plain text that summarized the general idea of the memes but was not in the least bit funny. One group saw the COVID-19 memes, while a second group saw the memes, not about COVID-19.

HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD MEME SERIES

In our main study, we recruited nearly 800 participants to view a series of images using online survey software.

Me when i call it COVID-19 instead of the rona /i46B1OPTXG- Jenn7399 March 27, 2020 Using that data, we developed two pools of memes using the same images: One set had captions about COVID-19 and another set had captions unrelated to COVID-19. We asked participants to rate them for how funny and cute they were, as well as how authentic they seemed as popular internet memes. The first step in our researchВ was combing through hundreds of real memes we found in the wild on social media. I partnered with colleagues Robin NabiВ and Nicholas EngВ to investigate the potential effect of mini meme breaks on peopleвЂ™s pandemic stress and emotions. Popular internet memes often develop their own names, such as вЂњ Distracted Boyfriend,вЂќ вЂњ Squinting WomanвЂќ and вЂњ Handshakes.вЂќ They have existed since long before the birth of the internet, but digital technology adds new dimensions, given the ease of creating, editing, and sharing memes online. Memes are little units of cultureВ that spread from one person to the next. The popular вЂSuccess KidвЂ™ meme repurposed with a pandemic message. As the pandemic dragged on, I got more and more interested in how people were using social media вЂ“ and memes featuring cute and funny pics, in particular вЂ“ as a way to think and communicate with others about life during a global pandemic. I study media processes and effects, which is the psychology of how media messages can affect you. Between work, moving the laundry, and taking care of my own dogs, I could sneak a peek at Instagram and chuckle at images of very excited pups, psyched that their humans were now home all day, every day. ( T he Conversation) вЂ“ Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, while trying to feed, entertain and beg-to-sleep an infant whose daycare had closed, I needed a break but couldnвЂ™t really take one in April of 2020.Д®nter memes.

Highschool of the dead meme