Social humor during the coronavirus pandemic

The Covid-19 epidemic, which started to be seen in Turkey as of March 2020, has become an important problem. The news about the epidemic has found wide coverage in mass media and digital media. Internet technologies and digital life have reached a new dimension in the digitalized world with the Covid-19 epidemic. After the epidemic, daily life has required digitalization. With this digitalization, while social interaction in daily life has decreased, social interaction in the digital environment has increased. This transformation that occurs with digitalization creates the digital culture/electronic culture environment. Social areas such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram present traditional cultural elements by transforming them within the digital culture environment. During the Covid-19 epidemic, various contents were shared in digital media. An important content that emerged in this process was humor. Humor in social media is mostly discussed based on current events. The reflections of the epidemic process were met with humor in the digital environment. The troubles experienced were ironically shared through various humorous contents. Everything experienced during the pandemic process, from distance education to curfews, mask, distance, the importance of precaution to health communication, has been a humorous element, and the impact of the pandemic on social life has been humorously explained through various contents. In the period of curfews, the new context brought by the virtual environment became the ground where humor was produced. In our thesis study, the effect of the Covid-19 global epidemic on Turkish folk humor has been examined. How folk humor is expressed in memory and in which functions it is used in periodic conditions has been examined through the humor elements of coronavirus. Although the first purpose seems to be entertainment in the examined examples, the satire of the current situation and the elements to be considered in the epidemic are discussed. The society both met its need for socialization and expressed its sadness, joy and fear. Samples of the study were obtained from social media and various internet sites. The examples were evaluated based on superiority, incongruity and relaxation theories.