Online Humour as a Coping Mechanism in the Face of Corona Virus Pandemic: The Kenyan Context

Abstract

Abstract: WhatsApp as a social media platform continues to increase in popularity and constitutes a fundamental part of online discussions where user-generated content, often on topical issues, is shared and discussed by members of specific virtual communities. This study aimed to investigate the use of humour in discourses relating to the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) carried out on various WhatsApp groups as a coping mechanism to the impending threats and dangers posed by the confirmation of covid-19 cases in Kenya. Twenty five memes were collected from five WhatsApp groups populated by 921 participants majorly between the ages of 30 - 50 years between 13th March 2020 and 1st April 2020. These included: 1 professional group, 1 former high school students‟ group, 1 former college students‟ group, 1 county political forum and 1 religious group to which the authors belonged. The meme contents were subjected to Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis with a view to examining how the Kenyan public responded to the presence of the disease through the use of humour and deconstructing the semantic implications inherent in them. It emerged that humour on the COVID-19 pandemic transcended the domestic, educational, political, professional, religious, sexual and social domains of human existence. The study concluded that in the face of life-threatening calamities, people tended to resort to humour in order to evoke positive feelings and laughter by sharing funny content on the social media platforms. Laughter being a universal language and one of our first communication methods and considering the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is still on-going, the findings of this study should therefore expand on the scholarly discourse on the potential psychological impact of humour in life-threatening situations and to inform pre-and-post-trauma counseling therapy sessions. Keywords: CMDA, Corona Virus Disease, Humour, Social Media, Virtual Community