Rosyjskie i polskie memy internetowe jako narzędzie w walce z kryzysem epidemicznym COVID-19

The paper presents an analysis of demotivators from Polish and Russian websites. Being short messages, most often created as a combination of a graphic element and a brief text, they constitute very condensed acts of communication. The theoretic background of the survey is the modern approach to the Dawkins’ understanding of a meme. Attention was paid to several aspects of the examples: structure, main functions, whether they are universalor culture-specific and what characters they depict. The memes were collected from demotywatory.pl and demotivatorium.ru in two groups: March/April 2020 and October/November 2021. The purpose was to compare the material from the beginning of the outbreak and from much later, when the topic didn’t attract much attention of the societies. Memes are an effective tool for spontaneous struggle with the difficult pandemic reality, they can be generated quickly in response to the current socio-political situation.