Humor in the Time of Coronavirus: Pandemic and Expert Health Knowledge

Abstract: This article describes and classifies some of the memes, jokes, and other forms of humor that circulated on social media, blogs, and websites curated by health-care workers in the United States during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This humor emerged in direct response to the chaotic information environment, an environment in which rumor, gossip, conspiracy theory, bad health information, and legend thrived both within and outside of official institutions such as the White House and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I argue that the humor shared among health-care professionals can be seen as a response to threats to their authority and expert knowledge that emerged in these forms during the pandemic; they also were a traditional means of temporarily asserting power by inverting unhappy realities in a context in which health-care workers felt they had little power and control and in which their own personal safety was at risk.