Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the breaking and bending of civil discourse that ´disaster humour’ allows, its uses and abuses in negotiating morality and making sense of unprecedented experiences within everyday life brought on by global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

From its initial, localised emergence to its full-blown global disruption of social and cultural norms the COVID-19 pandemic was met with a barrage of humorous public response. From internet memes to workplace jokes, a varyingly ambivalent and transgressive gallows-humour emerged across the spectrum of oral and digital folklore. Humour in times of calamity has long been a subject of folkloric research. Whether springing from natural or man-made disasters, terrorism or economic catastrophes, folklorists have studied the practice of humour in exoticizing and othering victims, to mediating disparate views and processing overwhelming emotions as well as analysing the role of media in its expression and distribution. In discussion with these approaches this paper focuses its attention on the breaking and bending of civil discourse that calamity allows. It asks how narratives and visual folklore encompass negotiations of morality and prudence in collective action. The paper questions the uses and abuses of humour in social media in making sense of unprecedented everyday experiences and reacting to discursive shifts, or rather tremors, brought on by global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. It also discusses challenges and possible innovations in collecting and researching online expressions of humour in times of calamity.