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Second International Handbook of Internet Research pp 167–183Cite as

Digital Folklore

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Abstract

Internet researchers recurrently encounter kinds of online content and communicational genres that appear as trivial and mundane as they are entangled with the everyday use of new media: online jargons, emoticons, copy-pasted jokes, Internet memes, and many other repertoires of digital folklore. Over the last four decades, this sort of semiotic resources and user practices have been approached from multiple angles: as forms of textual play or poaching, as examples of visual or linguistic creativity, as a material culture resulting from networked communications, as vernacular resources for identity making, and as the folk art of new media. After revisiting the convergence of folklore studies and computer-mediated communication, this chapter presents four perspectives through which various authors have approached digital folklore: Internet folkloristics, vernacular creativity, digital folk art aesthetics, and memetics.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Gabriele de Seta

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  1. Gabriele de Seta
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Correspondence to Gabriele de Seta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Jeremy Hunsinger

  2. Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Matthew M. Allen

  3. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Lisbeth Klastrup

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de Seta, G. (2020). Digital Folklore. In: Hunsinger, J., Allen, M., Klastrup, L. (eds) Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1555-1_36

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