Use the recent scholarly interest in large-scale joke datasets—such as the 32,000 "dad jokes" collated from Reddit—to explore how humans and machine learning models evaluate humor. This could focus on "benign violation theory," which explains why certain shared content becomes viral.
Viral Relief: The Role of Downloadable Internet Memes as Stress-Reduction Tools During Exceptional Circumstances .
Explore how "downloading and sharing" jokes serves as a method for emotional catharsis during global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper would argue that these digital artifacts are "potent vehicles for social connection".