Da “Le bimbe di Conte” a “Non ce n’è Coviddi”: la narrazione memetica della pandemia

The Covid-19 pandemic was accompanied by an overproduction of memes that spread with a super-exponential pattern. The memetic phenomenon was so extensive that it crossed the entire media ecosystem, representing a significant case for the understanding of the dynamics around public agenda setting and social response during the prolonged period of uncertainty. The present work reconstructs the main themes that have characterized the online narration about the pandemic as well as the Italian cases of “Le Bimbe di Conte! (“The Girls of Conte) and “Non ce n’è Coviddi” (“There is No Covid”), which seem adequate to illustrate on the one hand the process of popularization of politics and on the other the interaction between traditional media, grassroots production, and platforms in producing memetic contents that act on the thrust of the intersection between media and social media logic