DIGIFOLK · Digital Folklore as Critical Heritage Production and Participation in Contemporary Norway

Digital folklore – digitally (re)produced and mediated vernacular cultural expression – is a form of active, ongoing and self-including heritage production that gives us insights into what is culturally, socially and politically significant to a diverse public. Despite the importance critical heritage scholars place on participation, challenging authorised discourses, and the role of heritage in addressing broader social and political challenges, digital folklore is neglected within critical heritage studies. DIGIFOLK bridges this gap and investigates ephemeral and rapidly-changing digital folklore to explore the complex digital reproductions and renegotiations of folklore amongst the varied groups that constitute contemporary Norway. It challenges cultural-normative conceptualisations of folk culture in Norway to examine the hybridising nature of digital folklore in enacting differential social and cultural identification and affiliation, investigating digital folklore’s analogue antecedents in the Norwegian Folklore Archives (NFS) as a means by which a diverse public can meaningfully engage with heritage collections. Employing an innovative quali-quantitative approach combining social media data mining with ethnographic, cultural-historical, and visual and textual analytical methods, this project aims to: a) investigate the role of social media in the transmission and alteration of analogue folklore and the creation of hybridised/new digital folklore in Norway; b) connect contemporary digital folklore to collections in NFS to challenge the authenticating nature of the archive and embed unofficial knowledge in heritage discourse; c) expand participatory heritage models to recognise that the public create and engage with heritage outside of academic/institutional heritage discourse; and d) contextualise digital folklore in Norway within critical discourses on mobility, identity and belonging within Europe, in the context of populist and new nationalist movements.