In her TEDxUSU talk, folklorist Lynne McNeill says “When most people think of ‘folklore’ they think of the old, the rural, the rustic. They typically don’t think of the Internet, a technology that, if anything, is commonly judged to be dismantling our culture: destroying our interpersonal skills, squashing our cultural vitality, killing our individual creativity. Surprisingly, however, communications technologies like mobile phones, tablets, and computers have become the locus of a huge expanse of contemporary folk culture. Understanding the nature of folklore helps us identify the positive elements of digital culture.”
In this extraordinary time of fake news and Trump’s Tweets, we’ll revisit the good and the bad of our digital world through the lens of folklore. We’ll also talk about trends in digital folklore in 2016 and what those trends mean. We’ll talk with Lynne McNeill, Assistant Professor of Folklore in the USU English Department; and Jeannie Thomas, Head of the USU English Department.
