Newslore

Newslore PDF Author: Russell Frank
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781604739299
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Newslore is folklore that comments on and hinges on knowledge of current events. These expressions come in many forms: jokes, urban legends, digitally altered photographs, mock news stories, press releases or interoffice memoranda, parodies of songs, poems, political and commercial advertisements, movie previews and posters, still or animated cartoons, and short live-action films. In Newslore: Folklore on the Internet and in the News, author Russell Frank offers a snapshot of the items of newslore disseminated via the Internet that gained the widest currency around the turn of the millennium. Among the newsmakers lampooned in e-mails and on the Web were Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and such media celebrities as Princess Diana and Michael Jackson. The book also looks at the folk response to the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Frank analyzes this material by tracing each item back to the news story it refers to in search of clues as to what, exactly, the item reveals about the public's response. His argument throughout is that newslore is an extremely useful and revelatory gauge for public reaction to current events and an invaluable screen capture of the latest zeitgeist.

What Happens Next?

What Happens Next? PDF Author: Gail de Vos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
This fascinating book uncovers the history behind urban legends and explains how the contemporary iterations of familiar fictional tales provide a window into the modern concerns—and digital advancements—of our society. What do ghost hunting, legend tripping, and legendary monsters have in common with email hoaxes, chain letters, and horror movies? In this follow-up to Libraries Unlimited's Tales, Rumors, and Gossip: Exploring Contemporary Folk Literature in Grades 7–12, author Gail de Vos revisits popular urban legends, and examines the impact of media—online, social, and broadcast—on their current iterations. What Happens Next? Contemporary Urban Legends and Popular Culture traces the evolution of contemporary legends from the tradition of oral storytelling to the sharing of stories on the Internet and TV. The author examines if the popularity of contemporary legends in the media has changed the form, role, and integrity of familiar legends. In addition to revisiting some of the legends highlighted in her first book, de Vos shares new tales in circulation which she sees as a direct result of technological advancements.

Race and Ethnicity in Digital Culture

Race and Ethnicity in Digital Culture PDF Author: Anthony Bak Buccitelli
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440840636
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Book Description
In this unprecedented study, leading scholars and emerging voices from around the world consider how race and ethnicity continue to shape our everyday lives, even as digital technology seems to promise a release from our "real" social identities. How do people use the new expressive features of digital technologies to experience, represent, discuss, and debate racial and ethnic identity? How have digital technologies or digital spaces become racialized? How have the existing vernacular traditions, or folklore, surrounding identity been reshaped in digital spaces? And how have new traditions emerged? This interdisciplinary volume of essays explores the role of traditional culture in the evolving expressions, practices, and images of race and ethnicity in the digital age. The work examines cultural forms in exclusively digital environments as well as in the hybrid environments created by mobile technologies, where real life becomes overlaid with digital content. Insights from academics across disciplines—including anthropology, communications, folkloristics, art, and sociology—consider the interplay between race/ethnicity, everyday vernacular culture, and digital technologies. Six sections explore traditional cultural affordances of technology, folklore and digital applications, visual cultures of race and ethnicity, racism and exclusion online, political activism and race, and concluding observations. The book covers technologies such as vlogs, video games, digital photography, messaging applications, social media sites, and the Internet.

Tradition in the Twenty-First Century

Tradition in the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Trevor J. Blank
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 0874219000
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century, eight diverse contributors explore the role of tradition in contemporary folkloristics. For more than a century, folklorists have been interested in locating sources of tradition and accounting for the conceptual boundaries of tradition, but in the modern era, expanded means of communication, research, and travel, along with globalized cultural and economic interdependence, have complicated these pursuits. Tradition is thoroughly embedded in both modern life and at the center of folklore studies, and a modern understanding of tradition cannot be fully realized without a thoughtful consideration of the past’s role in shaping the present. Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today’s modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how “tradition” will fare in years to come. The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in folklore and will contribute significantly to the scholarly literature on tradition within the folklore discipline. Additional Contributors: Simon Bronner, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Merrill Kaplan, Lynne S. McNeill, Elliott Oring, Casey R. Schmitt, and Tok Thompson

The Digital Folklore of Cyberculture and Digital Humanities

The Digital Folklore of Cyberculture and Digital Humanities PDF Author: Papadakis, Stamatis
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1668444631
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
Where human communication and development is possible, folklore is developed. With the rise of digital communications and media in past decades, humans have adopted a new form of folklore within this online landscape. Digital folklore has been developed into a culture that impacts the ways in which communities are formed, media is created, and communications are carried out. It is essential to track this growing phenomenon. The Digital Folklore of Cyberculture and Digital Humanities focuses on the opportunities and chances for folklore research online as well as research challenges for online folk groups. It presents opportunities for production of digital internet material from items and research in the field of folk culture and for digitization, documentation, and promotion of elements related to folk culture. Covering topics such as e-learning programs, online communities, and costumes and fashion archives, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for folklorists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, students and faculty of higher education, libraries, researchers, and academicians.

The Last Laugh

The Last Laugh PDF Author: Trevor J. Blank
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299292037
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
Widely publicized in mass media worldwide, high-profile tragedies and celebrity scandals—the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, the embarrassing affairs of Tiger Woods and President Clinton, the 9/11 attacks or the Challenger space shuttle explosion—often provoke nervous laughter and black humor. If in the past this snarky folklore may have been shared among friends and uttered behind closed doors, today the Internet's ubiquity and instant interactivity propels such humor across a much more extensive and digitally mediated discursive space. New media not only let more people "in on the joke," but they have also become the "go-to" formats for engaging in symbolic interaction, especially in times of anxiety or emotional suppression, by providing users an expansive forum for humorous, combative, or intellectual communication, including jokes that cross the line of propriety and good taste. Moving through engaging case studies of Internet-derived humor about momentous disasters in recent American popular culture and history, The Last Laugh chronicles how and why new media have become a predominant means of vernacular expression. Trevor J. Blank argues that computer-mediated communication has helped to compensate for users' sense of physical detachment in the "real" world, while generating newly meaningful and dynamic opportunities for the creation and dissemination of folklore. Drawing together recent developments in new media studies with the analytical tools of folklore studies, he makes a strong case for the significance to contemporary folklore of technologically driven trends in folk and mass culture.

Digital Legend and Belief

Digital Legend and Belief PDF Author: Andrew Peck
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299343405
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
The internet brings new urgency to the study of folklore. The digital networks we use every day amplify the capacity of legends to spread swiftly, define threats, and inform action. Using the case of a particularly popular digital bogeyman known as the Slender Man, Andrew Peck brings the study of legends into the twenty-first century. Peck explains not only how legends circulate in the digital swirl of the internet but also how the internet affects how legends seep into our offline lives and into the mass media we consume. What happens, he asks, when legends go online? How does the internet enable the creation of new legends? How do these ideas go viral? How do tradition and technology interact to construct collaborative beliefs? Peck argues that the story of the Slender Man is really a story about the changing nature of belief in the age of the internet. Widely adopted digital technologies, from smartphones to social media, offer vast potential for extending traditional and expressive social behaviors in new ways. As such, understanding the online landscape of contemporary folklore is crucial for grasping the formation and circulation of belief in the digital age. Ultimately, Peck argues that advancing our comprehension of legends online can help us better understand how similar belief genres—like fake news, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, rumors, meme culture, and anti-expert movements—are enabled by digital media.

North American Monsters

North American Monsters PDF Author: David J. Puglia
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646421604
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
Mining a mountain of folklore publications, North American Monsters unearths decades of notable monster research. Nineteen folkloristic case studies from the last half-century examine legendary monsters in their native habitats, focusing on ostensibly living creatures bound to specific geographic locales. A diverse cast of scholars contemplate these alluring creatures, feared and beloved by the communities that host them—the Jersey Devil gliding over the Pine Barrens, Lieby wriggling through Lake Lieberman, Char-Man stalking the Ojai Valley, and many, many more. Embracing local stories, beliefs, and traditions while neither promoting nor debunking, North American Monsters aspires to revive scholarly interest in local legendary monsters and creatures and to encourage folkloristic monster legend sleuthing.

Heritage and Democracy

Heritage and Democracy PDF Author: Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813070368
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Examining cultural heritage within the context of democracy Cultural heritage is a powerful tool in society, capable of producing both social harms as well as social goods and benefits, which can be distributed unevenly via political channels. Reaching across disciplines and national boundaries, this volume examines cultural heritage work within the context of both democratic institutions and democratic practices, including participatory, deliberative, and direct democratic practices. Case studies highlight how democratic politics and cultural heritage shape, impact, and depend upon one another. The rising crisis of democracy across the globe brings these dynamics into sharp relief. The unfinished and fragile nature of democratic politics shines a spotlight on both its shortcomings and its aspirational potential. This is a paradox that heritage practitioners and stakeholders navigate daily, serving as both critics and collaborators of democracy. At the same time that heritage practice embraces participatory approaches, it must also address the challenge of reconciling multiple, often unequal, and frequently incompatible claims for control over heritage. Grappling with democracy’s crises also increasingly means recognizing the power of heritage to reinforce or undermine democracy. These essays ask: What are the democratic motives of heritage practice? Why do democracies need heritage? How do the social and cultural referents of heritage infuse democratic practices? Emphasizing the interplay of heritage and democracy in practices and institutions across scales of governance, Heritage and Democracy pinpoints a dynamic that has not been widely examined. Contributors: Stacey L. Camp | Jon D. Daehnke | Kasey Diserens Morgan | Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann | Dorothy Ann Engmann | Bobbie Foster Bhusari | Peter G. Gould | Erin A. Hogg | Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels | Magda E. Mankel | Chelsea H. Meloche | George P. Nicholas | Ellen J. Platts | Jasmine Reid | Paul A. Shackel | John R. Welch A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

Folklore and Social Media

Folklore and Social Media PDF Author: Andrew Peck
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646420594
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
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