Conducting Cross-Cultural Research on COVID -19 Memes (2022)

Abstract: A cross-linguistic study of COVID-19 memes should allow scholars and professionals to gain insight into how people engage in socially and politically important issues and how culture has influenced societal responses to the global pandemic. This preliminary study employs framing analysis to examine and compare issues, actors and stances conveyed by both English and Chinese memes. The overall findings point to divergence in the way individuals communicate pandemic-related issues in English-speaking countries versus China, although a few similarities were also identified. ‘Regulation’ is the most common issue addressed by both English and Chinese memes, though the latter does so at a comparatively higher rate. The ‘ordinary people’ image within these memes accounts for the largest percentage in both data sets. Although both Chinese and English memes primarily express negative emotions, the former often occurs on an interpersonal level, whereas the latter aims at criticizing society and certain group of people in general. Lastly, this study proposes explanations for these findings in terms of culture and political environment.

## introduction while memes have provided people worldwide with a unique way to engage in the pandemic discourse through expressing opinions and values, voicing complex feelings, and seeking out affiliations with others @xcite , a systematic examination of their use across cultures has not been subject to comparative analysis. the premise of this paper is that a communication-oriented study of covidmemes will provide scholars and professionals (e.g., policy makers) with a route to understanding a key device many now use to engage with socially and politically important issues. these individual and collective narratives can be highly consequential for users' mental health and emotional well-being @xcite . they can also impact public confidence and trust in the various preventive measures being implemented, as well as the institutions responsible for adopting them. moreover, a comparative account of meme use across cultures should shed light on fundamental questions about the importance of culture in societal responses to the global pandemic. as @xcite convincingly argues, "with our attention focused on scientific and technological innovations in response to covid-19, there is much missed with respect to cultural innovation during this time." this preliminary study employs a framing analysis to comparably examine the pandemic-related english and chinese memes as collected from memebase foot_0 and dou tu la foot_1 website respectively. we analyze issues, actors and actors' stances conveyed by the sample memes. given the difficulty to distinguish between the geopolitical origins of online content, users employ language to establish borders while consuming such content. therefore, viewing language as an analogue to culture is a feasible approach to cross-cultural research on digital content @xcite . ## findings and discussion the results of the research question support the working premise of this study; namely, that memes convey respective public's opinions and that culture influences how people have been responding to the pandemic.