![]() In this article, we focus specifically on coronavirus Internet memes-cultural units, typically humorous in nature, circulating widely in digital environments and carrying meanings about the various facets of the epidemic, from the virus itself and its spread to protective equipment, measures, changes to everyday life, and broader economic and social impacts. This is a rich medium, thus, for creativity researchers who aim to explore creative responses to the pandemic. In this context, social media becomes instrumental for connecting with others, sharing one’s experience, and generating new ways of understanding the experience of others. Being in lockdown or imposed social distancing disturbs daily life and calls for new and creative ways to make sense of the situation and adapt to it. Beyond the number of deaths and the impact on jobs and the economy, the measures imposed to stop the spread of the virus are difficult to cope with on a personal level. The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious challenge for individuals and societies worldwide. The article ends with reflections on what these findings tell us about creativity on social media more generally and the creative processes involved in the generation and reception of coronavirus memes in particular. An interesting finding concerns the importance of elaboration and humor for the evaluation of creativity in the case of memes, above the more traditional criteria of surprise (proxy for novelty) and meaningfulness (proxy for appropriateness), perhaps a feature unique for Internet spaces. To answer these questions, we use a triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods by having 480 memes coded by three social media users for surprise, meaningfulness, elaboration, humor, and creativity and qualitatively analyzing those memes that score highly on each dimension. We ask, in particular, what makes a coronavirus meme creative and what this creativity tells us about the pandemic and popular understandings of it. In this article, we examine the creativity of such memes from a dedicated Reddit community. Social media is a privileged space for mundane and participative creativity through the production and sharing of coronavirus Internet memes. In everyday life, both in online and offline spaces, people use their creativity to make sense of the current situation, to cope with it, and to learn its lessons. Times of crisis call for creative solutions, and these are not reduced to the work of scientists or politicians. ![]() The current pandemic and the measures taken to address it, on a global scale, are unprecedented. ![]()
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