We are (not) the virus — Daniël de Zeeuw, Tommaso Campagna, Eleni Maragkou, Jesper Lust, and Carlo De Gaetano

Introduction

In March 2020, COVID-19 became a truly global crisis, overshadowing another looming and equally global crisis: climate change. During the first COVID-19 lockdown the decrease in human activity due to lockdowns had a direct effect on our ecological footprint, as shown by satellite imagery of Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions (Ghosh 2020). This has been referred to as the “Anthropause” (Rutz et al. 2020). This in turn led to a supposed resurgence of nature, popularized by pictures of wild animals roaming urban infrastructures or soaring through crystal clear skies – even when these were often fake (Daly 2020) like the swans and dolphins returning to the Venice canals (Kinefuchi 2020).

While the ecological impact of the lockdown has been shown to be minimal if not imperceptible at scale, nature’s return was still seen as a “silver lining” (Royle 2020) to the COVID-19 pandemic by many. Attitudes toward the resurgence of nature were articulated through memetic phrases like “We are the virus,” “Corona is the cure,” and “Nature is healing.” Such phrases became politically and ideologically charged in highly divergent ways: from utopian eco-spiritual musings, anarcho-primitivist critiques of industrial civilization, to populist and far right conspiracy theories about a Great Reset by global elites, including future “climate lockdowns.” However, these phrases were also often used in an ironic and satirical way to comment on the sentiments they express in their “sincere form,” using ironic humor and parody in displays of “bad environmentalism” (Bosworth 2021).

On the basis of the key memetic phrases associated with the what The New York Times dubbed the Coronavirus Nature Genre (Hess 2020), the goal of this project was to answer the following research question: “How were human-nature relations during and after the first global COVID-19 lockdown represented on social media?” This was explored through several sub questions:

• What are the key phrases that emerged from the first COVID-19 lockdown, and where on the Web do they occur?
• How does engagement with the phrases change over time and between platforms, and what kinds of engagement are dominant?
• What are the differences in stance, affect, focus, and visual style between phrases and across platforms?

Approach and datasets

Following a quali-quantitive approach (Venturini and Latour 2010) and using digital methods and tools (Rogers 2019), we performed both a visual network analysis and a qualitative sampling of the most engaged-with content over time and across five major social media platforms: Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Before the sprint began, we identified several key phrases often recurring in the ‘Coronavirus Nature Genre’. To collect data from the aforementioned platforms, we designed a query into three general categories of different versions of the key phrase:

• We are the virus (For Tiktok: #wearethevirus; for all other platforms: [“humanity is the real virus,” “we are the real virus,” ”we’re the virus,” “humanity is the virus,” “we are the virus”]
• Nature is healing (For Tiktok: #earthishealing and #natureishealing; for all other platforms: [“earth is recovering,” “earth is healing,” “nature is healing”]
• Corona is the cure (For TikTok: n/a; for all other platforms: [“coronavirus is the cure,” “covid is the cure,” “corona is the cure”].

Because we were interested in the popular usage of these phrases before, during, and after the first global COVID-19 lockdowns, we collected data from 1st January 2020 to 1st January 2022. The data was collected from Instagram, Reddit and Facebook using Crowdtangle. To collect data from Twitter and Tik Tok we used 4CAT and Zeeschuimer, which are open-source tools developed by OILab and the Digital Methods Initiative (Peeters and Hagen, 2022). In line with ethical standards for online data research, we collected only publicly available data, and made sure to blur any personal information of private persons like photographic portraits and (user)names in this publication (see note 1).

All this data was saved in spreadsheets and uploaded on 4CAT for a systematic analysis. First, using the software Image Sorter, we created an image wall with the most engaging 10 posts per platform, as a first visual exploration of our dataset. Then, to have a sense of which phrase returned more results over time, we created a bump chart visualization that shows changes in the total number of posts retrieved with our queries per platform over the selected period. To understand what content gained most attention in our dataset, we also selected the top 100 posts for each platform in the given time period, following the metrics used by different platforms to indicate engagement (number of likes and comments for Instagram, number of reactions for Facebook, number of upvotes for Reddit, number of Likes for Twitter and TikTok, see note 2).

To understand the differences in stance, affect and focus between the three key phrases, the resulting sub-collections were manually coded using the following scheme:

• Stance: is the phrase used in a sincere or ironic way?
• Affect: does the phrase express an optimistic, neutral, or pessimistic sentiment?
• Focus: is the phrase used in a way that is ecocentric, meaning focusing mainly on the environment, or egocentric, meaning focusing mainly on humans?

The manual coding was performed by small groups of participants, each focusing on one or more platforms, and coding both the overall and time-specific samples. Using Rawgraphs, an open source data visualization framework (Mauri et al. 2017), we created three Beeswarm plot visualizations (one for each code), to see how the meanings of the posts were evolving over the five selected time periods.

Finally, to see the most recurring elements in our image collections, we used Google Vision API to look at the top-300 images per platform for the phrases “Nature is healing” and “We are the virus” (The phrase “Corona is the cure” was excluded from this analysis, as it returned fewer images). We accessed the Google Vision API through Memespector GUI (Chao, 2021) and visualized the labeled subsets with Gephi (Bastian et al., 2009), a visualization and exploration software for networks (see fig. 2). The resulting 10 image-label networks were manually annotated, and representative images from the dataset were added and annotated. This helps to describe the general characteristics of a set of images while also highlighting images emblematic of each of those characteristics.

Results

Quantitative analysis
To get a sense of the differences that existed across platforms, we plotted the relative distribution of the three main phrases for each platform. To acquire an overview of the overall occurrence and development of the phrases over time (Fig. 3a), we also generated a streamgraph divided by phrase (Fig. 3b). Finally, the top-50 images for all platforms and phrases were collected and compiled into an imagewall.

As illustrated by the streamgraph (Fig. 3a), the diffusion of the memetic sentences during the two years analyzed coincides with the different waves of COVID-19 and their respective lockdowns. Of the three sentences analyzed, “nature is healing” is overall the most prominent, followed by “we are the virus” and “corona is the cure.” This last sentence is far less prominent than the other two and appeared only on Twitter and Facebook during the first lockdown during spring 2020.

Qualitative analysis
1. Stance (sincere-ironic)

In early 2020, we found most posts to express a sincere sentiment across platforms. As the focus is not yet on the coronavirus during this time, the most prominent phrase is “Nature is healing,” which was already widely used in relation to spirituality and wellness, especially on Facebook and TikTok. Once lockdowns begin to be implemented across the world in March-April 2020, this sentiment is more directly addressed to the supposed positive effects of humanity’s absence. In the case of “we are the virus,” these sincere expressions are often misanthropic (fig. 4b).

However, very quickly, posts turn highly ironic, particularly on Twitter and Reddit, which makes sense given the fact that such uses of the phrase do so in parodic reference to sincere uses (fig. 4c). These platforms are especially conducive to irony, humor, and play (Massanari, 2015; Vicari et al., 2020). These often take the form of memes mocking these phrases’ original pathos and challenging the stark opposition between humans and nature assumed and produced through them (Bosworth, 2021). The predominance of ironic uses of the phrase “Nature is healing” shows how both the pandemic and the climate crisis are memefied in an anthropocentric way by turning a sentiment that might have once started sincerely into a humorous, sarcastic, and often jaded examination of lockdown and post-lockdown life, no longer concerned about possible apocalyptic future scenarios or a genuine let alone progressive commentary on these issues.

2. Affect (optimistic-neutral-pessimistic)

Both Twitter and Reddit posts are mostly neutral, which seems to correspond to the character of the platforms: Twitter tends to favor critical and humorous engagement with content, while Reddit is known for its playful, ironic, and often subversive and abusive engagement. Facebook and TikTok posts are predominantly optimistic, whereas Instagram wavers between the optimistic and neutral (again, we believe, due to the relatively high number of ironic posts that are mocking both optimistic and pessimistic use of the phrases). Only after the first peak is this trend inverted on Facebook, before regaining some of its optimism during the next wave. Both optimistic or pessimistic sentiments thus mainly correlate with a sincere stance. Overall, the trend leans towards optimistic, humorous, and lighthearted posts, which corresponds with the predominance of “Nature is healing” over “We are the virus.”

3. Focus (ecocentric-egocentric)

Posts were also evaluated based on their focus and whether that was more anthropocentric or geared towards nature. During the first wave, content on Facebook and TikTok tends to be ecocentric, with posts focusing on the healing properties of nature initially, and the destruction of nature as a result of human activity later on. On the other hand, Twitter and Reddit focus more on humans (egocentric), which fits well with the two platforms’ more playful affordances; Twitter and Reddit facilitate a public discourse that is humorous, ironic, and critical. Instagram, as a more commodified hub of internet culture, is split between the two. All platforms seem to shift towards a more egocentric focus over time. Even posts featuring the “nature is healing” phrase ultimately begin to use the term “nature” very loosely to refer to aspects of human sociality and culture.

Whereas ecocentric posts mostly contain sincere warnings about humanity’s impact on the planet or instead celebrate that mother earth is healing (fig. 6c), egocentric posts instead tend to be more lighthearted and humorous (fig. 6b). It is this anthropocentric element of much of the visual content emerging during the later period of the pandemic lent itself quite easily to appropriation of the memetic phrases by brands, media outlets, and content creators. For example, the phrase “nature is healing” can be used to celebrate a new celebrity selfie, promote the return of happy hours, or improve an influencer’s visibility within the algorithm.

Ultimately, however, even posts that focus on nature tend to anthropomorphize nature (e.g. “mother nature”), indicating that most attempts to center the environment discursively shift to anthropocentrism, as the dominant lens through which human and more-than-human relationships are seen.

Image analysis

On Facebook, during the initial months of the pandemic, the phrase “nature is healing” communicates a spiritually-inflected sentiment about the healing properties of nature, i.e. nature is healing us, humans. This is also true for TikTok, where the queries mostly lead to sincere and inspirational videos on how being out in nature is healing for the human soul and beneficial for mental health. Similarly to Facebook, they are linked to spirituality and religion, and are not necessarily connected to the pandemic. During the first wave, and as the memetic phrases begin to proliferate across different platforms, the phrase “nature is healing” gains a new meaning: nature is healing itself (from the harm caused by humans).
Besides a peak during the first lockdown in 2020, we also found a second peak in May 2021. Later, “Nature is healing” is by far the dominant phrase, whereas there are almost no occurrences of “We are the virus” and “Corona is the cure”.

Given the fact that in May 2021 the “resurgence of nature” was no longer a topic (Turnbull et al. 2022), since by then global industrial activity and travel had wholly or in part returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, why do we see the resurgence of the phrase itself? Looking more closely at the images connected to the “Nature is healing” phrase in May 2021, we found that, rather than celebrating the return of nature due to people having to stay inside, on the contrary, now the phrase was mainly used to celebrate people being able to go outside and socialize again, i.e. the return of everyday social and cultural life. Users did so by poking fun at the various minutiae, banalities, and peculiarities of everyday life. Going to the gym and campus parties were reframed as “nature healing”, alongside pop cultural moments that pander to collective nostalgia, such as the Jonas Brothers reuniting. While it seems as though the users had a good general idea of what the hashtag initially meant, they transformed the original meaning to fit the joke. Its meaning was thus almost completely inverted, which explains why the other phrases did not peak in this period, as well as the overall optimistic and anthropocentric tendencies.

Posters and artistic contribution

The main output of the data sprint was a research presentation poster, which can be downloaded here. We also published a more artistic version of our research in the Critical Meme Reader II: Memetic Tacticality (published by Institute of Network Cultures, 2022). For this contribution, we produced a (human-generated) poem using the memetic phrases as input, accompanied by a series of AI-generated memes based on these and similar phrases (figs. 7a and 7b).

Conclusion

In 2003, then UK environment minister Michael Meacher compared humanity to a virus destroying the world. He might  have gotten the inspiration from The Matrix (1999), where Agent Smith exclaims that humanity, in its expansive parasitic drift, acts like a virus (an observation that is certainly ironic, given the AI’s own energy dependence on human bodies, as Neo soon finds out after taking the red pill). During the first global COVID-19 lockdown in March-May 2020, this analogy got a new lease of life, as the temporary reduction of human industrial activity and travel clearly showed what we already knew: that such activity has an immensely transformative and destructive effect on the environment (Searle and Turnbull 2020). The first global lockdown speaks to this problem in that it offered a glimpse into what climate change and a decelerated world looks like, and as such widened the space of the possible, of imagining the unimaginable: a large-scale reduction of humanity’s ecological footprint. As Isaijah Johnson (2020, n.p.) states: “If we wish to avoid climate catastrophes, we must pursue a different future than the one we are on track for today. However, there is a problem: How do we move toward a future that we cannot imagine?”

As a structure of feeling, misanthropy is one way of relating to all this. It has reared its head within the ecological movement throughout the years, while also being actively contested from within it. The label of “ecofascism” is an often heard accusation, while others merely propose to take an “ecocentric” perspective, in an attempt to bridge the human-nature divide (Humphrey 2002). How to think about the complex relations between human and non-human natures after the Anthropause (Searle et al. 2021)? And how do these relations bear on the ways the latter is imagined as opposed to, or instead entangled with, the former? Moreover, is an abstract “humanity” actually the right target of the ecological critique, or is it more apt, as Jason Moore suggests, to talk about the Capitalocene rather than the Anthropocene? Who is the “we” in the phrase “we are the virus”, if not the affluent classes and the extractive systems that support their amassment of private wealth? Or is the very idea of (part of) humanity as a parasitical Other a moral cul de sac? On Twitter and Instagram, critical discourses emerged in response to phrases like We Are The Virus, e.g. through various counterslogans like “we are not the virus,” “Capitalism Is The Virus,” or “the system is the virus,” thus problematizing the idea of universal human responsibility (Fine and Love-Nichols 2021).

Phrases such as “nature is healing” may resonate with climate concerns and raise awareness (Young et al. 2021) but also reveal problematic assumptions behind climate activism (Bergman 2021). They speak to the often “unconscious and affective dimensions of contemporary ecological issues” (Lertzman 2015, book blurb) including how romantic, utopian, or instead dystopian and even apocalyptic affect become tethered to certain reactionary political stances. Both romanticizing notions of nature as “healing” and misanthropic perceptions of “humanity as the virus” have been criticized as playing into ecofascist ideas about population control (Hughes et al. 2022; for a historical account see Biehl and Staudenmaier 1996).

Our research yielded new empirical insights into the affective and political lives of these memetic phrases, as enchanted codifications of collective experience bursting forth from social media platforms during the first global COVID-19 lockdown. It reveals the complexities and ambiguities of how people make sense of humanity’s devastating and irreversible impact on the environment in the Anthropocene, wavering between sincerity and irony, optimism and pessimism, ego- and ecocentrism. Once things returned to normalcy – relative to the abnormality of the climate crisis – phrases like “nature is healing” lost their sense of urgency and possibility, and were ironically appropriated to celebrate the resurgence of everyday human life, including the unsustainable, pre-COVID-19 consumer lifestyle patterns that characterize it. A portal no more (Roy 2020), the COVID-19 Nature genre forces us to reckon with the manifold responses to climate catastrophe and its different polarizations, from degrowth movements to new ecofascist resistances, to more mundane and depoliticized affects and their attendant practices of comic relief and critique.

Notes

1. See “Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0 Association of Internet Researchers”, https://ahrecs.com/resources/internet-research-ethical-guidelines-3-0-association-of-internet-researchers-aoir-october-2019/
2. Because we were interested in tracking if and how this engagement was changing over time, we also selected the most engaging 100 posts for five specific date ranges that correspond to key moments during the pandemic: 1 Jan – 15 March 2020, 1 April – 15 April 2020, 1 Jan – 15 Jan 2021, 1 May – 15 May 2021, 1 Dec – 15 Dec 2021. As a result of this selection, we looked at the most engaging 600 posts per platform and 3000 posts in total.

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