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Digital Folklore: hybrid conference Programme

— Posted on 6th May 2024

We have a terrific line-up of speakers on the programme for our Digital Folklore hybrid conference, 28-30 June 2024, online and in-person at Kings College London, Strand, London WC2B 4BG, UK

For more information, and to download the programme and booking form, please visit: https://folklore-society.com/event/digital-folklore-conference/

Programme

Friday 28 June

13:00: Registration, Kings College London, Strand Campus

13:30: Conference opening

14:00-15:30: Session 1: Contextualising the Digital in Folklore

Hannes Mandel: Digital Folklore avant la lettre: William John Thoms’s mid-nineteenth-century social media network. [in person]

Kathleen Ragan: From Folktales to Facebook: A systems approach to the study of narrative across evolutionary time. [in person]

Stella Wisdom: Digital Disruption of Traditional Publishing and Broadcasting Channels: The rise, popularity and preservation of folklore zines, podcasts, livestreams and sound walks in the twenty-first century. [in person]

15:30-16:00: Break

16:00-17:00: Session 2: Methodology

Chris Douce & Tamara Lopez: The Folklore of Software Engineering: A methodology for study. [in person]

Gabriele de Seta: An Algorithmic Folklore: Vernacular creativity in times of everyday automation. [in person]

17:00-17:30: Video Essay: Siobhan O’Reilly: (Dis)Comfort and Liminal Spaces. [online]

17:30-18:30: Drinks reception

Saturday 29 June (parallel sessions all day)

09:00: Registration

09:30-11:00: Parallel Sessions 3A and 3B

Session 3A: Photography

David Clarke & Andrew Robinson: In The Eye of the Beholder: Digital folklore and the Calvine UFO photograph. [online]

Dipti Rani Datta: Folk Photography in the Age of Social Media in Bangladesh: An introduction to the changing landscape. [online]

Daria Radchenko: Heaven as News Screen: Semiotic ideologies of natural phenomena on social media. [online]

Session 3B: From Analogue to Digital

Meghna Choudhury: From Parchment to Pixels: Digital transformation of Indian oral narratives and reinterpretation of The Panchatantra in the digital landscape. [in person]

Maryam Magaji: Remediation in Hausa Folktales on YouTube. [online]

Angelika Rüdiger: Monitoring the Transformations of Gwyn ap Nudd online. [in person]

11:00-11:30: Break

11:30-13:00: Parallel Sessions 4A and 4B

Session 4A: The Weird and the Horrific

Dawn Brissenden: British Cryptids: The continuation of belief online. [in person]

Erika Kvistad: Imaginary Prisons: Maze horror and Minotaur horror in digital folklore. [online]

Aphrodite-Lidia Nounanaki: AI-generated ‘Scary Stories’ and Creepypastas on TikTok:  A new version of digital ‘narratives’. [online]

Session 4B: Rituals and Celebrations

Catherine Bannister & Yinka Olusoga: Playing in the Digital Posthuman: Culture, custom, and the ‘entangled’ child through a folklore lens. [in person]

Catherine Bannister, Fiona Scott, Shabana Roscoe & Yao Wang: ‘It was definitely a Pokémon-themed Christmas that we had’: How do children and families sacralise and desacralise elements of digital play during celebratory times? [in person]

Aušra Žičkienė: Round-Number Birthday Celebrations For Seniors In Lithuania: An audiovisual narrative online and contemporary musical folklore. [online]

13:00-14:00: Lunch break

14:00-15:30: Parallel Sessions 5A and 5B

Session 5A: Public Authority and Public Health

Simon Gall: The Institutional Harnessing of Vernacular Authority in Traumatic Times: The use of Scots language in NHS Grampian’s online public health communications during the COVID-19 pandemic. [in person]

Andrea Kitta: God Gave Me an Immune System: Religious belief, anti-masking, and anti-vaccination sentiments online in the United States during COVID. [in person]

Hanna-Kaisa Lassila: Public Shaming and Vernacular Disciplining on Social Media as Entertainment. [online]

Session 5B: Memes

Paul Cowdell: Memes: When the digital world put the human back into the non-material. [in person]

Tina Paphitis: Cheeky! The cultural and political history of some digital folklore. [in person]

Oleksandr Pankieiev: (De)Constructing Hero Motifs in the Digital Folklore of the Russo-Ukrainian War. [in person]

15:30-16:00: Break

16:00-17:30: Parallel Sessions 6A and 6B

Session 6A: Conspiracy Theories

Diana Coles: Warming Pans and Moonbumps: Mythologising the royal family. [in person]

Tim Tangherlini: Parler Games: Conspiracy theory, conspiracy and insurrection. [online]

Marc Tuters: Folk Narratives of Distrust: On the socio-technical dynamics of conspiricization. [in person]

Session 6B: Art and Aesthetics

Amy Gray: Cottagecore Capitalism: Trending hashtags, throwaway culture, and landfill. [in person]

India Lawton: Little Red Riding Hood Online: Visual arts exploring the woods metaphor and the suppression of the female voice in the digital world. [in person?]

Ruby Sage McGowan: Goblin Lore to Goblincore: How old stories inspired a new generation’s online identity. [in person]

Sunday 30 June (parallel sessions until 11:30)

09:00: Registration

09:30-11:00: Parallel Sessions 7A and 7B

Session 7A: Humour

Ian Brodie: Has TikTok Saved Jokes? The presence of joke-telling in short-form online video. [in person]

Drake Hansen: Your Flop Era is Showing: Notes on the aesthetic creations of a camp TikTok community [in person]

Lauren (LG) Fadiman: ‘To the FBI agent watching me through my phone’: Social media, the surveillance imaginary, and the erotics of observation in a Twitter joke cycle. [in person]

Session 7B: Transforming Bodies and Sacrality

Sophia Kingshill: Digital Dualism: The online Doppelgänger and its analogues. [in person]

Helen Frisby: Digital Deathways in Twenty-first Century Britain. [in person]

Sonia Prodan: Sacred (Online) Space: The journey of faith from offline to virtual veneration. [online]

11:00-11:30: Break

11:30-13:00: Session 8: Narrative Communities

Nicolas Le Bigre: Emergent Folk Narrative Forms in Online Commentating. [in person]

Maria Isabel Lemos: Posting ‘nos tradison’. Mapping diasporic digital networks and cultural flows. [online]

Francesca Padget: Fandom Folklore: Exploring identity formation and community in fanfiction culture. [online]

13:00: Conference ends

 

Conference fees and Registration: Reduced rates apply to: Conference speakers; Folklore Society members; Seniors; Students; Unwaged/Low Earner.  Free for: Student speakers; Kings College London students; Kings College staff attending online (£30 in person)

In-person participants: Full conference: £110 reduced rate; £160 standard rate. Day rates also available: Contact us for details

To register: Download the Booking Form here

Online participants: Full conference: £80 reduced rate with Promo Code; £100 standard rate. Day rates also available: Contact us for details

To register, visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-folklore-hybrid-conference-tickets-837543654617?

To get the Promo code for reduced rate online tickets: log in to the Folklore Society Members area at https://folklore-society.com/members-only or email us at https://folklore-society.com/about/contact/