Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web

Abstract

Through the example of a specific blog, this article locates a category of online discourse termed the “vernacular web.” Because the definitive trait of the vernacular is its distinction from the institutional, the vernacular web emerges in specific network locations as a communal invocation of alternate authority. Imagining those invocations as located communication processes, the concept of a vernacular web provides the theoretical language necessary for speaking about the complex hybridity that new communication technologies make possible.

Slender Man is Coming

“…as well as of media scholars and folklorists. To be sure, the Slender Man phenomenon is greatly indicative of folklore in the digital age, where media convergence and hybridized cultural communication outlets afford individuals greater access to (and dissemination of) information, operational autonomy, and the provision of infinite choice while exploring a vast array of creative avenues, providing a platform to forge communal bonds interchangeably between online and face-to-face communication and blurring the boundaries between corporeality/virtuality as well as between folk, mass, and popular culture (Blank 2013(Blank , 2015(Blank , 2016Howard 2008;McNeill 2009; see also Foster and Tolbert 2016).…”

Ethical Frameworks and Ethical Modalities: Theorizing Communication and Citizenship in a Fluid World

“…If popular culture artifacts have multiple and even contradictory meanings, how do fans agree on an ethical framework? Media scholars and fan experts Kristina Busse and Jonathan Gray argue that fan communities are not just imagined communities (W. Lance Bennett & Segerberg, 2013;R. G. Howard, 2008), but are also literal instantiations of Stanley Fish's interpretive communities.…”

Comics as Folklore

“…But it also suggests a specific type of engagement; my own characterization of the folkloresque does not refer to all interactions between folklore and popular culture, nor does it conflate popular culture with folklore (although this is a valuable experiment). For example, I am not (or at least not explicitly) talking about fan studies or the folkloric processes by which popular culture and mass media are used by communities and individuals-such as Robert Glenn Howard's (2008) powerful concept of the "vernacular web." We accept that social media, and all the other interactive experiences of the Internet, are nothing if not folkloric.…”