Humorous Reactions to Controversies in the Estonian Public Sphere: Form, Content, Mechanisms and Comments

Abstract

The article investigates the humorous reactions to two important controversies that received a great deal of attention in the Estonian public sphere during the summer of the year 2023. These are the Wagner group rebellion and the scandal involving Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. Building on theories of the public sphere and observations on how humour functions in such a context, by comparing the two cases, we tested the hypothesis that the content, form, humour mechanisms, and the comments on humour can be influenced by the nature of the controversy and by the psychological distance to the source of the initial triggering controversy. We used the data collected and coded within the CELSA network project “Humour and Conflict in the Public Sphere: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Humour Controversies and Contested Freedoms in Contemporary Europe”. The analysis revealed that 1) the most popular forms of humour in the online public sphere (primarily memes) are shaped by the patterns of the online communication in general and not by the particular cases or controversies; 2) humour mechanisms depend moderately on the nature of the controversy and their distance from the meme-makers; 3) content is most dependent on the nature of the controversy, and is affected by the tension between globalisation and localisation trends; and 4) the distance to the controversy influences the humorousness of the comments.