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.
