[UPDATED on April 10]
CHICAGO As their city confronts a wave of COVID-19 patients, Chicagoans are managing to get some belly laughs. The source? Memes of their leader staring down would-be social-distancing violators.
In one doctored image, a somber Mayor Lori Lightfoot peers down from the roof of the famous Superdawg hotdog stand alongside a pair of wiener statues.
Others shared under the hashtag #whereslightfoot show her at an empty jazz club, from the reflective sculpture known as the Bean and in a treasured impressionist painting that hangs in the citys Art Institute.
Lightfoot memes proliferated after a March 26 order in which the mayor angrily closed Chicagos lakefront and other major recreation spots that had become overrun with people.
Rather than get defensive, Lightfoot has played up her hard-nosed image.
Chi Party Aunt is not wrong.
— Archived: Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot (@mayorlightfoot)
She made a lighthearted in which she bakes, sings, cajoles, bargains, talks astrology and fluffs pillows to reinforce her administrations Stay Home, Save Lives mantra.
Heres whats up, Lightfoot tells viewers in one clip. If I make this shot, you gotta stay home. She then dunks a ball into a basketball hoop attached to her fridge and does a victory cheer.
Chicagos mayor isn’t the only elected leader leveraging humor to prod citizens into complying with COVID-19 directives.
Metuchen, New Jersey, Mayor Jonathan Busch starred in a playful
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ridiculed the notion that anyone could simultaneously practice and engaged in witty on-air with his little brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo.
The governor also recruited comedian to do a PSA, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom tapped comic actors (a former doctor) and to put their personal spins on stay-home messaging.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has encouraged riffs on his COVID-19 warnings, like a and a made by firefighters.
“If it makes people smile right now, I’m for it,” Beshear said during a news conference.
While humor may attract attention to the message, its not clear how effective it is at changing behavior. That is especially true with the current pandemic.
Weve never had a crisis like this, and so its really hard to say that what worked in another setting might work in this setting, said Susan Polan, associate executive director for public affairs and advocacy at the American Public Health Association.
shows people respond more positively to messages about health threats when they are conveyed with humor.
Funny content often gets shared a lot, which means the message reaches more people, Polan said. For example, an animal calendar caused web traffic to spike in the associations disaster preparedness campaign.
The serious messaging is everywhere, Polan said. The memes and videos constitute an add-on that is going to appeal to some people.
However, using humor might be risky, according to , a professor of communication science at the University of Maryland.
In a 2017 , she and a collaborator compared the short-term reactions of 303 undergraduate students to humorous and non-humorous messages about drunken driving and unprotected sex. They found that messages with sarcasm and irony generated more arguments against the implied health advice.
Sarcasm, in particular, led to more pushback, maybe because people dont want to be made fun of.
Take the irate Italian mayors on a . Where are you going with these incontinent dogs? one shouts. You are irresponsible idiots colossal idiots! Another threatened to use flamethrowers on partygoers.
A witty approach may get people’s attention, but that may come at the cost of decreased message strength, Nan said. I would tread with caution when it comes to using humor in COVID-19 messaging.
Kelly Leonard, executive vice president of The Second City, a Chicago-based improvisational comedy troupe that also does training, said its about context: When theres a need for cold facts in a crisis, you probably dont want to be cracking jokes.
But people also need a release valve. Theres a reason that all of our late-night shows are comedy shows, right after the news, Leonard said.
Leonard observed that Lightfoot is the first openly queer black woman to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city. Shes also short in stature. Those outsider traits may relate to her skill at wielding humor to deflate tension.
Shes had to live a life of such othering and made it through, Leonard said. She IS the mayor of Chicago. It gives her a kind of power, and shes using it.
Polan agreed: Shes making fun of herself and using it to educate people, and thats powerful.
[Correction: This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. ET on April 10 to correct the affiliation of Xiaoli Nan. She is a professor at the University of Maryland.]
