Participatory storytelling and the new folklore of the digital age

Abstract

This dissertation asserts that the internet and widespread digital media have provided a place for storytelling that was not present in the age where television was the dominant provider of narrative, and that the type of storytelling that happens in that place recalls oral traditional, not mass media, models. By looking at three qualities of traditional storytelling--variability, performance, and collectivity--I demonstrate that the relationship between author, text, and audience is becoming more fluid and dynamic. I suggest that, considering these shifts toward modes that recall traditional storytelling, the best perspective from which to view these changes is that provided by folklore studies, as it provides a holistic framework for examining the teller, the story, the audience, the ways they influence each other in the act of telling, and the formation of communities around stories over time.

Drawing on a century's worth of folklore studies, my examination of variability in digital stories challenges the notion of text as a fixed object of study, and looks at ways that contemporary creators seek to facilitate variations on their own stories. My look at performance suggests that each digital storytelling event is a unique co-cooperation between teller and audience, the story being the product of the tensions and interactions taking place during that event. My study of collectivity identifies the role of communities in guiding the creation, meaning, reception and distribution of digital stories over time, and how those stories serve to guide the creation of those communities in turn. Finally, I focus on a series of stories surrounding a horror character called Slender Man to demonstrate the nature of digital folklore, tracing issues of variation, distribution, interactivity, mediation, community formation, and ownership as they developed across a specific storytelling effort.