Digital Humour in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Shepherd Mpofu is Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the University of Limpopo, South Africa. He is an African Humanities Programme Fellow. He is co-editor of Mediating Xenophobia in Africa (Palgrave, 2020). He regularly publishes in academic journals on themes such as media and identity, media and protests, gender and race.

• Chapter 1: Social media and COVID-19: Taking humour during pandemics seriously.- 2.Social media memes as commentary in health disasters in South Africa and Zimbabwe.- 3.Viral jokes: Humour and grace as critical devices in memes about the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.- 4. ‘Coromentality’: Nigerians’ use of memetic humour during the COVID-19 lockdowns.- 5. Playfulness, or a subversion of hegemonic scientific knowledges? Analysing Internet memes and discourses on traditional medicines as remedies for COVID-19 in Zimbabwe.- 6. “Can we uninstall 2020 and install it again? This version has a virus!”: Humor and misinforming during COVID-19 pandemic on social media.- 7. Social media audience’s interpretation of selected humour memes on coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.- 8.Coronavirus satire: A dissection of feminist politics and humour.- 9 ‘A nation that laughs together, stays together’: Deconstructing humour on Twitter during the national lockdown in SouthAfrica.- 10 Fear and loathing and laughter: Covid 19 as an expression of decolonial love.- 11 #VoetsekANC and Covid Corruption: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of “A Song for the ANC”.- 12 Humour in the time of COVID-19 pandemic: A critical analysis of the subversive meanings of WhatsApp memes in Zimbabwe.- 13 Humour in the age of contagion: Coronavirus, ‘Janata Curfew’ meme, and India’s digital cultures of virality.- 14 The use of meme and hashtags on Twitter towards government response during the COVID-19 curfew announcement from 1st June -14th June 2020.- 15 Dark humour, ubuntu and the COVID-19 pandemic: A case of subaltern humoring of political elite deaths on social media.