ESF grant 8137

Duration 1.01.2010-31.12.2013

This grant project continues the studies of the previous grant, but takes them further by concentrating on the place and space and the values of folklore online. Taking advantage of the material collected on some communities (temporary and permanent online groups, such as geocaching, SF, petowners, patients with difficult or incurable disease), communication between professionals and non-professionals (medics versus patients and their kin; astronomers versus amateurs; anonymous comments on public boards) will be analysed. Questionnaires and analyses have outlined the formation of identity and personal relations of online communities together with textual production of main types of cyber-communication, with a number of characteristic values that have been identified. Our focus will be the place and space and the processes of folklore online. Main issues treated in this grant project include: 1) Mechanisms of place creation. 2) The sociocultural position various folklore genres online, also the application of traditional folklore to constructing cyberlocality, how this reflects values and which models are used. 3) Narrative models online and their application in various situations. 4) Use of traditional folklore to demonstrate personal identity (in blogs, photo sites). 5) The personal experience narratives as carriers of culturally significant messages. 6) The use of folklore in commercial internet sites.

Project leader: Mare Kõiva, senior researcher, Department of Folkloristics at the ELM. Areas of study: on-line medicine, religious communities, crises, narrative models.

Main participants

Mare Kalda, scholar at the Department of Folkloristics at the ELM. Areas of study: Geocaching, treasure lore in the Internet, intertextuality.

Eda Kalmre, senior researcher at the Department of Folkloristics at the ELM. Areas of study: socialization process of girls through the looking glass traditions and practices in the Internet.

Andres Kuperjanov, researcher at the Department of Folkloristics, ELM. Areas of study: astronomy, science and pseudoscience in WWW, folklorisation process of science.

Piret Voolaid, researcher at the Department of Folkloristics at the ELM. Areas of study: sports fanatics, problems of online databases.

Liisa Vesik, assistant, graduate student at the University of Tartu, assistant-editor at the Department of Folkloristics, ELM. Areas of study: animal lore, virtual communities, statistical analysis.

Associated members:

Maria Jelenevskaya, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities and Arts

Larisa Fialkova, University of Haifa, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature

Selection of series WORKING PAPERS

Medica VII. People vs the Natural and the Artificial. Power relations. Abstracts