What Can Pandemic Humour Tell Us about Public Trust in Politics?

The third speaker in this ECREA 2022 session is Delia Dumitrica, whose focus is on political humour in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her project investigated the representation of politicians in such humour as an expression of trust in politics, across Estonia, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, and Romania, working with data from digital media during the March to July 2020 period.

Much of this political humour was directed at national political actors, COVID-19 policies, and national institutions; less so at the polity, international political actors, and others. Some of this was poking innocuous fun about the political authority that some pandemic experts and political actors had gained through their role in the pandemic. Others were more ambiguous in their message, using more problematic references to warfare or totalitarian regimes. Some played on politicians’ trademark traits, showing them for instance as survivors of the pandemic or as bearing the signs of long periods of lockdown.

More critical humour depicted governments as chaotic or disorganised by placing them in comedic contexts, juxtaposing conflicting pandemic advice, or showing politicians and their pandemic rules as being ignored by the general public.

These different types of humorous posts represent two clusters of political humour, then: depoliticised humour that pokes fun at the overall situation, and more explicitly sarcastic criticism of the failures of the political elites.