American Folklore and the Mass Media


Book Description

"This book shows how folklore -- magic, miracles, and tales of enchanted princesses and genial giants -- is still alive and well in the modern mass media.... contains a wealth of facts and observations with which to conjure." -- Journal of Communication "Dégh brings her decades of expertise in folk narrative to bear in this well-researched, provocative study of the interrelationship between traditional processes of folk narrative performances and modern mass media.... Highly recommended... " -- Choice "Spanning folk cultural developments as old as feudalism and as new as today's TV ad, American Folklore and the Mass Media demonstrates how vital folklore remains, how often it absorbs -- rather than being absorbed by -- the most dramatic technological innovations and social realignments." -- Carl Lindahl "... all six essays are meaty and informative contributions to vital folkloric issues..." -- Contemporary Legend




Folklore and the Internet


Book Description

A pioneering examination of the folkloric qualities of the World Wide Web, e-mail, and related digital media. These stuidies show that folk culture, sustained by a new and evolving vernacular, has been a key, since the Internet's beginnings, to language, practice, and interaction online. Users of many sorts continue to develop the Internet as a significant medium for generating, transmitting, documenting, and preserving folklore. In a set of new, insightful essays, contributors Trevor J. Blank, Simon J. Bronner, Robert Dobler, Russell Frank, Gregory Hansen, Robert Glenn Howard, Lynne S. McNeill, Elizabeth Tucker, and William Westerman showcase ways the Internet both shapes and is shaped by folklore




Folk Culture in the Digital Age


Book Description

Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore, Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folklore in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications made possible by digital “new media” technologies. New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures. Folklore in the Digital Age provides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.




Media Sense


Book Description

Essays on folkloristic approaches to popular culture




Children's Folklore


Book Description

A groundbreaking collection of essays on a hitherto underexplored subject that challenges the existing stereotypical views of the trivial and innocent nature of children's culture, this work reveals for the first time the artistic and complex interactions among children. Based on research of scholars from such diverse fields as American studies, anthropology, education, folklore, psychology, and sociology, this volume represents a radical new attempt to redefine and reinterpret the expressive behaviors of children. The book is divided into four major sections: history, methodology, genres, and setting, with a concluding chapter on theory. Each section is introduced by an overview by Brian Sutton-Smith. The accompanying bibliography lists historical references through the present, representing works by scholars for over 100 years.




Myths of Social Media


Book Description

SHORTLISTED: Business Book Awards 2021 - Sales & Marketing Everyone knows that social media is free, millennials are all adept social media experts, that businesses always have to be available 24/7 and ultimately none of it really matters, as the digital space is full of fake news and online messaging is seen as inauthentic. Don't they? The use of social media as a business tool is dominated by falsehoods, fictions and fabrications. In Myths of Social Media, digital consultant Michelle Carvill and workplace psychologist Ian MacRae dismiss many of the most keenly-held misconceptions and instead, present the reality of social media best practice. Using helpful and instructive, sometimes entertaining and occasionally eye-watering examples of what you should and should not do, Myths of Social Media debunks the most commonly held myths and shows you how to use social media effectively for work and at work.




Rebuilding an Enlightened World


Book Description

Today, the long-assumed belief in the permanence of an enlightened world is suddenly open to challenge. Human rights, participatory government, and social justice are losing global influence, and the world of ordinary people is pushing back against Enlightenment conceits. Accumulated anger links Taliban, Tea Party, and Trump, threatening women's rights, social justice, and democracy. To understand and counteract the threat to these ideas, we must set aside embedded explanations and embrace a new frame of observation and tolerance grounded in the power of belief, legend, and tradition. In Rebuilding an Enlightened World, Bill Ivey explores how folklore offers a unique and compelling new way to understand the underlying forces disrupting the world today. If we are to salvage the best of the Enlightenment dream and build a better future, we must begin to listen, patiently and inquisitively, in order to interpret the customs, norms, and traditional practices that shape all human behavior.




Cyberpl@y


Book Description

The Internet is changing the way we communicate. As a cross between letter-writing and conversation, email has altered traditional letter-writing conventions. Websites and chat rooms have made visual aspects of written communication of greater importance, arguably, than ever before. New communication codes continue to evolve with unprecedented speed. This book explores playfulness and artfulness in digital writing and communication and anwers penetrating questions about this new medium. Under what conditions do old letter-writing norms continue to be important, even in email? Digital greetings are changing the way we celebrate special occasions and public holidays, but will they take the place of paper postcards and greeting cards? The author also looks at how new art forms, such as virtual theatre, ASCII art, and digital folk art on IRC, are flourishing, and how many people collect and display digital fonts on handsome Websites, or even design their own. Intended as a time capsule documenting developments online in the mid- to late 1990s, when the Internet became a mass medium, this book treats the computer as an expressive instrument fostering new forms of creativity and popular culture.




Slender Man Is Coming


Book Description

The essays in this volume explore the menacing figure of Slender Man—the blank-faced, long-limbed bogeyman born of a 2009 Photoshop contest who has appeared in countless horror stories circulated on- and offline among children and young people. Slender Man is arguably the best-known example in circulation of “creepypasta,” a genre derived from “copypasta,” which in turn derived from the phrase “copy/paste.” As narrative texts are copied across online forums, they undergo modification, annotation, and reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation. Though by definition legends deal largely with belief and possibility, the crowdsourced mythos behind creepypasta and Slender Man suggests a distinct awareness of fabrication. Slender Man is therefore a new kind of creation: one intentionally created as a fiction but with the look and feel of legend. Slender Man Is Coming offers an unprecedented folkloristic take on Slender Man, analyzing him within the framework of contemporary legend studies, “creepypastas,” folk belief, and children’s culture. This first folkloric examination of the phenomenon of Slender Man is a must-read for anyone interested in folklore, horror, urban legends, new media, or digital cultures. Contributors: Timothy H. Evans, Andrea Kitta, Mikel J. Koven, Paul Manning, Andrew Peck, Jeffrey A. Tolbert, Elizabeth Tucker




Folklore and Folklife


Book Description

Describes the characteristics of folk cultures and discusses the procedures used by social scientists to study folklife.