Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.02
Juwen Zhang
Abstract:Facing the outbreak of an unprecedented pandemic, along with a disturbing sociopolitical environment, folklorists should and can reflect upon what we have done within our discipline and what we can contribute to the discourse and public understanding of such realities with folkloristic perspectives. This introduction intends to define the study of folklore of epidemics as a new research area, building upon the studies of disaster folklore and ethnic minority folklore. It also discusses issues of marginalization, minoritization, and invisibility in folklore studies as a reflection of systemic racism in folkloristics as well as in broader society where the victimization of minorities and low-income class during the COVID-19 pandemic has been ultimately exposed.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfr.2023.a886955
Juwen Zhang
Abstract: Tales ( gushi in Chinese, including all narrative genres) are like living fossils—preserving not only historical events in general, but also behaviors and beliefs in specific places and in specific cultural groups. Therefore, Chinese tales of epidemics reveal fundamental beliefs in and life-views toward not only epidemics, but also the meaning of living a life. The three parts in this paper are intended to tell a long story: first providing some basic terms and concepts related to epidemics; second presenting, for the first time in English, seven tales spanning a two-millennia history up to the present day which show the struggles between the human and the god/ghost/ wu -shaman of epidemics; and, finally, offering some reflections upon the realities we are facing in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.03
David Todd Lawrence, Heather Shirey
Abstract:The COVID-19 Street Art Database is a crowdsourced collection of more than five hundred individual records containing images of street art, including stickers, tags, light projections, murals—all manner of artistic expression in the streets, in public space, written on or affixed to the built environment. This is more than an archive of visual expression; it is an archive of vernacular communicative acts, communication in process, expressing the concerns and emotions of cultural groups—especially as expressed by those who do not see themselves as part of the power structure. An exploration of this collection of images reveals that street art can address the fears and confusion surrounding all that accompanies a pandemic like COVID-19. Like verbal vernacular narrative forms, we argue that street art can make external our cultural responses to the experience of crisis. It can connect people to each other during extended periods of isolation such as quarantine, offer alternative narratives regarding relations of power and previously existing conditions of oppression and exploitation, comment on the nature of public space, and indeed multiply the impact of all these messages as well as pertinent advice and direction about safety and health—especially in a moment when in-person contact around the world has been curtailed.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfr.2023.a886954
Whitney Phillips, Jeffrey A. Tolbert
Abstract: COVID-19 folklore can be deadly. It also poses a particular set of challenges to researchers endeavoring to study it, and indeed, to researchers who are not actively studying it yet still find themselves confronted by it on their social media feeds. These challenges emerge from digital constraints and affordances that obscure—and are designed to obscure—digital folklore's full context, resulting in vexing problems of amplification, rampant artifactualization, and potential weaponization by bad actors. Folklorists can minimize these outcomes by drawing from methodological insights of the past, while at the same time zeroing in on the unique contours of the present. Erving Goffman's analysis of everyday performance, for instance, provides a critical methodological entry point to digital ethnographies, with one internet-era update. Online, seemingly backstage elements—from digital tools to platform affordances to algorithms—are a critical part of the frontstage. The ethnographic vistas that open up when the online backstage is reframed as the online frontstage help foster stronger, more nuanced digital folkloristics. This also encourages researchers to reflect on the reciprocal influences of technologies, and how we all impact our networks through everyday actions like sharing, commenting, and liking.
{"title":"The Things We Already Know and the Things We're Set Up Not to See: Folkloristics, COVID-19, and the Traps of Amplification","authors":"Whitney Phillips, Jeffrey A. Tolbert","doi":"10.2979/jfr.2023.a886954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jfr.2023.a886954","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: COVID-19 folklore can be deadly. It also poses a particular set of challenges to researchers endeavoring to study it, and indeed, to researchers who are not actively studying it yet still find themselves confronted by it on their social media feeds. These challenges emerge from digital constraints and affordances that obscure—and are designed to obscure—digital folklore's full context, resulting in vexing problems of amplification, rampant artifactualization, and potential weaponization by bad actors. Folklorists can minimize these outcomes by drawing from methodological insights of the past, while at the same time zeroing in on the unique contours of the present. Erving Goffman's analysis of everyday performance, for instance, provides a critical methodological entry point to digital ethnographies, with one internet-era update. Online, seemingly backstage elements—from digital tools to platform affordances to algorithms—are a critical part of the frontstage. The ethnographic vistas that open up when the online backstage is reframed as the online frontstage help foster stronger, more nuanced digital folkloristics. This also encourages researchers to reflect on the reciprocal influences of technologies, and how we all impact our networks through everyday actions like sharing, commenting, and liking.","PeriodicalId":44620,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FOLKLORE RESEARCH","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfr.2023.a886957
Juwen Zhang
Abstract: Facing the outbreak of an unprecedented pandemic, along with a disturbing sociopolitical environment, folklorists should and can reflect upon what we have done within our discipline and what we can contribute to the discourse and public understanding of such realities with folkloristic perspectives. This introduction intends to define the study of folklore of epidemics as a new research area, building upon the studies of disaster folklore and ethnic minority folklore. It also discusses issues of marginalization, minoritization, and invisibility in folklore studies as a reflection of systemic racism in folkloristics as well as in broader society where the victimization of minorities and low-income class during the COVID-19 pandemic has been ultimately exposed.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.04
L. Gabbert
Abstract:This article describes and classifies some of the memes, jokes, and other forms of humor that circulated on social media, blogs, and websites curated by health-care workers in the United States during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This humor emerged in direct response to the chaotic information environment, an environment in which rumor, gossip, conspiracy theory, bad health information, and legend thrived both within and outside of official institutions such as the White House and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I argue that the humor shared among health-care professionals can be seen as a response to threats to their authority and expert knowledge that emerged in these forms during the pandemic; they also were a traditional means of temporarily asserting power by inverting unhappy realities in a context in which health-care workers felt they had little power and control and in which their own personal safety was at risk.
{"title":"Humor in the Time of Coronavirus: Pandemic and Expert Health Knowledge","authors":"L. Gabbert","doi":"10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article describes and classifies some of the memes, jokes, and other forms of humor that circulated on social media, blogs, and websites curated by health-care workers in the United States during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This humor emerged in direct response to the chaotic information environment, an environment in which rumor, gossip, conspiracy theory, bad health information, and legend thrived both within and outside of official institutions such as the White House and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I argue that the humor shared among health-care professionals can be seen as a response to threats to their authority and expert knowledge that emerged in these forms during the pandemic; they also were a traditional means of temporarily asserting power by inverting unhappy realities in a context in which health-care workers felt they had little power and control and in which their own personal safety was at risk.","PeriodicalId":44620,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FOLKLORE RESEARCH","volume":"60 1","pages":"43 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42157564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.06
Whitney Phillips, Jeffrey A. Tolbert
Abstract:COVID-19 folklore can be deadly. It also poses a particular set of challenges to researchers endeavoring to study it, and indeed, to researchers who are not actively studying it yet still find themselves confronted by it on their social media feeds. These challenges emerge from digital constraints and affordances that obscure—and are designed to obscure—digital folklore's full context, resulting in vexing problems of amplification, rampant artifactualization, and potential weaponization by bad actors. Folklorists can minimize these outcomes by drawing from methodological insights of the past, while at the same time zeroing in on the unique contours of the present. Erving Goffman's analysis of everyday performance, for instance, provides a critical methodological entry point to digital ethnographies, with one internet-era update. Online, seemingly backstage elements—from digital tools to platform affordances to algorithms—are a critical part of the frontstage. The ethnographic vistas that open up when the online backstage is reframed as the online frontstage help foster stronger, more nuanced digital folkloristics. This also encourages researchers to reflect on the reciprocal influences of technologies, and how we all impact our networks through everyday actions like sharing, commenting, and liking.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfolkrese.60.1.07
Juwen Zhang
Abstract:Tales (gushi in Chinese, including all narrative genres) are like living fossils—preserving not only historical events in general, but also behaviors and beliefs in specific places and in specific cultural groups. Therefore, Chinese tales of epidemics reveal fundamental beliefs in and life-views toward not only epidemics, but also the meaning of living a life. The three parts in this paper are intended to tell a long story: first providing some basic terms and concepts related to epidemics; second presenting, for the first time in English, seven tales spanning a two-millennia history up to the present day which show the struggles between the human and the god/ghost/wu-shaman of epidemics; and, finally, offering some reflections upon the realities we are facing in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jfr.2023.a886958
David Todd Lawrence, Heather Shirey
Abstract: The COVID-19 Street Art Database is a crowdsourced collection of more than five hundred individual records containing images of street art, including stickers, tags, light projections, murals—all manner of artistic expression in the streets, in public space, written on or affixed to the built environment. This is more than an archive of visual expression; it is an archive of vernacular communicative acts, communication in process, expressing the concerns and emotions of cultural groups—especially as expressed by those who do not see themselves as part of the power structure. An exploration of this collection of images reveals that street art can address the fears and confusion surrounding all that accompanies a pandemic like COVID-19. Like verbal vernacular narrative forms, we argue that street art can make external our cultural responses to the experience of crisis. It can connect people to each other during extended periods of isolation such as quarantine, offer alternative narratives regarding relations of power and previously existing conditions of oppression and exploitation, comment on the nature of public space, and indeed multiply the impact of all these messages as well as pertinent advice and direction about safety and health—especially in a moment when in-person contact around the world has been curtailed.
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