Both Chinese and English memes focused extensively on issues that were associated to regulation, scarcity of resources, and the working/studying. Certain issues were more present in memes of one language. For example, regulation was brought up more often in Chinese memes, while work/study was present more often in English memes.

Cross-Cultural Themes Arising from COVID-19 Memes: Addressed Issues

Differences existed between English and Chinese memes in terms of who was present in the memes. For example, English memes often depicted celebrities, while Chinese memes often portrayed characters from the Internet.

Cross-Cultural Themes Arising from COVID-19 Memes: Involved Individuals

Negative emotions were more prevalent in both English and Chinese memes. Interesting differences also emerged. For example, anger in English memes tended to be criticize the society or groups of people, while, in Chinese memes, specific individuals were often criticized.

Cross-Cultural Themes Arising from COVID-19 Memes: Emotion 

- Addressed Issues
- Involved Individuals
- Emotion

Davidson College

Research has investigated memes as information visualizations in different cultural setting. For instance, researchers have compared COVID-19 memes in Chinese and English.

Cross-Cultural Themes Arising from COVID-19 Memes (Chinese and English)

Ge-Stadnyk, J., & Sa, L. (2022, July). Conducting Cross-Cultural Research on COVID-19 Memes. In Proceedings of the The Fifth International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media (pp. 40-46).

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