Folklore and Social Media

Andrew Peck, Trevor J. Blank, Andrew Peck, Trevor J. Blank

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781646420582
• eBook ISBN:
  9781646420599
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

Ten years after the publication of the foundational edited collection Folklore and the Internet, Andrew Peck and Trevor J. Blank bring an essential update of scholarship to the study of digital folklore, Folklore and Social Media. A unique virtual, hybridized platform for human communication, social media is more dynamic, ubiquitous, and nuanced than the internet ever was by itself, and the majority of Americans use it to access and interact with digital source materials in more advanced and robust ways.
 
This book features twelve chapters ranging in topics from legend transmission and fake news to case studies of memes, joke cycles, and Twitter hashtag campaigns and offers fresh insights on digital heritage and web archiving. The editors and contributors take both the "digital" and "folklore" elements seriously because social media fundamentally changes folk practices in new, though often invisible, ways. Social media platforms encourage hybrid performances that appear informal and ordinary while also offering significant space to obfuscate backstage behaviors through editing and retakes. The result is that expression online becomes increasingly reminiscent of traditional forms of face-to-face interaction, while also hiding its fundamental differences.
 
Folklore and Social Media demonstrates various ways to refine methods and analyses in order to develop a better understanding of the informal and traditional dynamics that define an era of folklore and social media. It is an invaluable addition to the literature on digital folklore scholarship that will be of interest to students and scholars alike.
 
Contributors:
Sheila Bock, Peter M. Broadwell, Bill Ellis, Jeana Jorgensen, Liisi Laineste, John Laudun, Linda J. Lee, Lynne S. McNeill, Ryan M. Milner, Whitney Phillips, Vwani Roychowdhury, Timothy R. Tangherlini, Tok Thompson, Elizabeth Tucker, Kristiana Willsey
 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Old Practices, New Media | Andrew Peck
• 1. #LatinxGradCaps, Cultural Citizenship, and the “American Dream” | Sheila Bock
• 2. Bridges, Sex Slaves, Tweets, and Guns: A Multi-Domain Model of Conspiracy Theory | Timothy R. Tangherlini, Vwani Roychowdhury, and Peter M. Broadwell
• 3. The Vernacular Vortex: Analyzing the Endless Churn of Donald Trump’s Twitter Orbit | Whitney Phillips and Ryan M. Milner
• 4. The Death of Doge: Institutional Appropriations of Internet Memes | Andrew Peck
• 5. “Zero Is Our Quota”: Folkloric Narratives of the Other in Online Forum Comments | Liisi Laineste
• 6. Trickster Remakes This White House: Booby Traps and Bawdy/Body Humor in Post-Election Prankster Biden Memes | Jeana Jorgensen and Linda J. Lee
• 7. Dear David: Affect and Belief in Twitter Horror | Kristiana Willsey
• 8. The Beauty, the Beast, and the Fanon: The Vernacularization of the Literary Canon and an Epilogue to Modernity | Tok Thompson
• 9. Classifying #BlackLivesMatter: Genre and Form in Digital Folklore | Lynne S. McNeill
• 10. The Clown Legend Cascade of 2016 | John Laudun
• 11. The Blue Whale Suicide Challenge: Hypermodern Ostension on a Global Scale | Elizabeth Tucker
• 12. Overt and Covert Aspects of Virtual Play | Bill Ellis
• About the Contributors
• Index