Notes on a Book: Folklore and the Internet, Vernacular Expression in a Digital World

I loved the introduction to this book! It makes many of the same arguments I was already thinking of and gives me points to spring of from where my argument differs. Here are some quotes:

"As the Internet developed as a communications facilitator, folklore emerged as recognizably on it as it did in "the real world." From the earliest moments of the modern Internet's existence, folklore was a central component of the domain, moderating the intersection of computer professionals with hackers, newfangled lingo, and the dispersal of stories, pranks, and legends (Jennings 1990)." (page 2)

"But while folklore emerged on the Internet, folklorists generally did not follow it" (3).

"only a small handful of thoughtful folkloristic articles on the burgeoning Internet culture appeared (Baym 1993; Dorst 1990; Howard 1997; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995, 1996; Roush 1997)" (3). - check out these studies if I can find them.

"Each year, the American Folklore Society's annual meeting boasts more papers and panels on folklore and the Internet than the year before, yet these papers have not found their way to a culminating publication. ... No comprehensive work that details the folkloristic approach to the study of the Internet has been produced to date" (3).

"'It is here, in the heat of a nascent technology,' writes Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 'that we can contemplate what folklore's contemporary subject might be,' adding that 'electronic communication offers an opportunity to rethink folklore's disciplinary givens and to envision a fully contemporary subject'" (3).



"Folklore theory holds that folkloric expression is reflective and serves as a 'mirror' of societal and cultural values; folklorists should therefore use this mirror to analyze society and culture. This ought to encourage a scholarly examination of the Internet, due to this format's status as a major agent of communication. Still, folklorists of the late twentieth century have not budged." (4).

Questions to consider about the study of Internet folklore:
"What comprises vernacular expression? What do tradition, belief, legend, performance, and narrative mean in an Internet context? how does the Internet complicate notions of folk group, of audience, and of the dynamic, reflexive character of performance? As a mediatory agent, how does the Internet affect expression, engender unique folkloric material (and thus become a distinctive folk product itself), and reconfigure the nature of communication as a form of cultural maintenance and definition?"  (5).

"The Internet has shifted the social constructions of community, often taking on its own unique characteristics and modes of expressions. Participatory media, notes Howard, offer 'powerful new channels through which the vernacular can express its alterity' (2008a, 192). Creativity is at the center of folkloristic inquiry, and the manifestations of online identity formation, artistic expression, folk religion, and the social dynamics of community construction are all important venues for analysis." (12).

"Many of the topics traditionally explored by folklorists -- such as humor, expression, tradition, narrative transmission, commemorations, religion, and ritual -- have taken on new or modified lives int eh digital world" (13).