What Memes Say about Virtual Education During the Pandemic by COVID-19 Memes Say about Virtual Education During the Pandemic by COVID-19

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify what a set of memes that circulated in socio-digital networks communicate regarding virtual education in the context of the pandemic by COVID-19, with the understanding that the analysis of these can reveal the aspects that mostly concerned students during the face-to-face closure of higher education institutions, the strengths of Emergency Remote Education (ERE) and its weaknesses. Based on a multimodal analysis, 41 memes posted on Facebook, Reddit and Twitter between March 2020 and September 2021 were examined. The results revealed that the students' difficulties with virtual education and the emotional states they experienced, such as discouragement, fear and sadness for not understanding the contents of the courses, were projected in the memes. The authors also identified that virtual education during the lockdown period was characterized by the fact that the professors presented the contents of the course programs on the synchronic platforms and the students were required to carry out a significant number of tasks without definite formative objectives.