Art in digital humour: interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches—introduction to the special issue

This introduction reveals the methodological and theoretical tenets underpinning the research presented in this special issue, and provides an overview of the main findings. An interdisciplinary group of scholars attempted a multifaceted study of art in digital humour, instantiated in (but not restricted to) internet memes pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic theme. The contributions deal with a wide array of aspects involved in the recontextualization of art for humour-generating purposes, analysing the phenomena through the lenses of humour, art, and cultural studies. The core empirical base for the studies consists of an abundant corpus of internet memes collected during the first wave of the pandemic in several European countries in 2020. The interdisciplinary research proves to be fruitful in describing and categorizing the mechanisms at play.