Loodus tuleb tagasi: delfiinid ja saurused. Libauudistest, photoshop-muistenditest ja meemidest koroonakarantiini ajal

• Main Author: Eda Kalmre
• Format: Article
• Language: Estonian
• Published: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum 2021-04-01
• Series: Mäetagused
• Subjects: contemporary legend; fake news; meme; parody; participatory culture; rumour; social media; tall tale
• Online Access: http://www.folklore.ee/tagused/nr79/kalmre.pdf

The article follows the narrative trend initiated by the social media posts and fake news during the first months of the corona quarantine, which claims that the decrease of contamination due to the quarantine has a positive effect on the environment and nature recovery. The author describes the context of the topic and follows the changes in the rhetoric through different genres, discussing the ways in which a picture can tell a truthful story. What is the relation between the context, truth, and rhetoric? This material spread globally, yet it was also readily “translated” into the Estonian context, and – what is very characteristic of the entire pandemic material – when approaching this material, truthful and fabricated texts, photos, and videos were combined. From the folkloristic point of view, these rumours in the form of fake news, first presented in the function of a tall tale and further following the sliding truth scale of legends, constitute a part of coping strategies, so-called crisis humour, yet, on the other hand, also a belief story presenting positive imagery, which surrounds the mainly apocalyptically perceived pandemic period and interprets the human existence on a wider scale. Even if these fake news and memes have no truth value, they communicate an idea – nature recovers – and definitely offer hope and a feeling of well-being.