I've decided to focus on the folklore aspect more in my paper. As I mentioned before, I think it would be interesting to see how correct I am in my assumption that folklorists are resistant to breaking from tradition. So I stopped by my folklore professor's office for a chat.
We talked about whether he considers things like memes, themed photographs, and some Pintrest stuff folklore as well as stories people tell on their blogs and such. He said the line is fuzzy. It's not that he is resistant to changing the definition of folklore; just that he doesn't really think about it much. He said most people in his field are gathering folklore via the traditional means (face-to-face) and the same goes for the majority of his students. He hypothesized that this might be because folklore archives and other collection methods just haven't updated to store these kinds of things: in the William A Wilson folklore archive here at BYU, you have to have a physical copy of your project. These things just aren't stored online. So, he said, for example, you couldn't use an animation or a Youtube video. They're not stored online or digitally.
He's not sure how others in his field feel about the "issue" and so to his knowledge it's not really divided into two camps of opinions, more just that some might choose to explore this avenue, but most don't.
He did give me a list of people that I should talk to and one book to check out:
The book is called Folklore and the Internet and contains essays written by a number of folklorists. It is edited by Trevor Blank.
Jaquie Thursby here at BYU could tell me more about the use of folklore in literature/Shakespeare.
Greg Kelly is a contact of his at Guelph University in Canada who studies folklore online.
And I'm most excited to talk to Lynne McNneal is up at Utah State. She is all over the eFolklore idea.
