Images of Covid-19 in selected socially-mediated WhatsApp messages shared in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper employs the Reader Response criticism to analyse a selection of artified posts inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic and shared in WhatsApp groups by Zimbabweans. Social media groupings are the ‘in-thing’ today-this is where many now gather and interact variously unfettered by geographical constraints. The reader is a key element in the situation since messages are written with a reader in mind and sent to be read, hence the ‘natural’ selection of the Reader Response lens of analysis assumed here. The study notes that socially mediated messages in the artistic realm such as those analysed in this paper are potent communication and educational means as they are instantaneous and have the potential to reach all corners of the world via social media platforms. They can also be re-sent, edited and repurposed. They can go viral and assume meme status. In doing this, the word gets to the world. If however it gets there contaminated as often happens in pandemic induced infodemic settings, the powers that be can always intervene and address the misinformation.The paper contends that the texts that consist of cartoons, a combination of image and words, apparently photo-shopped pictures, combined with other signs and reassigned tell different stories about the pandemic. They can thus be treated as literature.The paper notes that Covid-19 is dramatised variously in the selected images: as something brought by Satan to win souls away from God, as a hide-out for the socially depraved and as an overly fearsome monster, among others. In spite of the horror of loss, some of the messages may be seen as providing the much needed cathartic outlet for the art producers and recipients cum sharers. In a way, such art provides comic relief especially for the pandemic hostages holed up in different lockdown settings around the globe. In education settings the images that can be perceived as pandemic ‘by-product’ art can be employed in different subjects as media to inculcate critical thinking and sharpen analytic skills.