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.

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

The practices of world politics are now scrutinised in a way that is unprecedented, with even those previously – or conventionally assumed to be – disengaged from international affairs being drawn into world politics by social media. Interactive websites allow users to follow election results in real-time from the other side of the world, and online mapping means that the world ‘out there’ is now available on your mobile phone. Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age engages these themes in contemporary world politics, to better understand how digital communication through new media technologies changes our encounters with the world. Whether the focus is digital media, social networking or user-generated content, these sites of political activity and the artefacts they produce have much to tell us about how we engage world politics in the contemporary age. This volume represents the starting point of a dialogue about how digital technologies are beginning to impact the research and practice of scholars and practitioners in the field of International Relations, with the collection of cutting-edge essays dealing specifically with the intertextuality of world politics and digital popular culture. This book will be of use to International Relations research academics (and critically engaged publics) interested in the core themes of global politics – subjectivity, militarism, humanitarianism, civil society organisation, and governance. The book also employs theories and techniques closely associated with other social science disciplines, including political theory, sociology, cultural studies and media studies.

?Folklore in the Digital Age shows how digital folklore transcends the boundaries of cyberspace and has very real effect on our everyday life in today's interconnected global world. Online and digital cultures are perhaps the most vivid aspects of globalization and while global multimedia culture may on the one hand endanger traditional folklore, there is no doubt that it creates new folklore as well. Collecting essays from Violetta Krawczyk-Wasilewska's 15 years of e-folklore research, this book is an illustration of the range of modern folklore studies. While these essays cover the most serious political issues of the day, such as the 9/11 attacks, the Arab Spring and global epidemic threats such as the HIV virus, the book also touches on more lighthearted topics, such as online dating and food culture.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.

Rev. ed. of: Media and culture. 2nd ed. c2000. Includes bibliographical references (p. 575-582) and index.

The mass production and diversification of media have accelerated the development of popular culture. This has started a new trend in consumerism of desiring new consumption objects and devaluing those consumption objects once acquired, thus creating a constant demand for new items. Pop culture now canalizes consumerism both with advertising and the marketing of consumerist lifestyles, which are disseminated in the mass media. The Handbook of Research on Consumption, Media, and Popular Culture in the Global Age discusses interdisciplinary perspectives on media influence and consumer impacts in a globalizing world due to modern communication technology. Featuring research on topics such as consumer culture, communication ethics, and social media, this book is ideally designed for managers, marketers, researchers, academicians, and students.

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

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