‘Folk’ in the Age of Algorithms: Theorizing Folklore on Social Media Platforms

Abstract

Over the past few decades, folklore scholars have demonstrated that online expressions and performance play a role in folklore studies and that folklore thrives in digital spaces. However, theorization of the specificities of digital spaces as sites for folklore is still just getting started. This article is a contribution to this theorization, focusing on one specific and popular area of connective culture: social media platforms. Combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres with perspectives from critical algorithm studies and science and technology studies (STS), I suggest that social media algorithms are actors which simultaneously promote change and continuity, and as such take part in folk culture and the production and transmission of folklore. The aim is to develop a theoretical framework that accounts for how the algorithm takes part in communication (whether human users are aware of it or not), in order to deepen our understanding of how tradition is created and sustained in algorithmically governed communication.