Author: Rosie Delilah Foden

Some research into different editorial illustrations and how they are presented within a magazine or newspaper.

Bold colours, easy to understand, comical, controversial, beautiful, fun, entertaining, informative.

 

 

The narrative in folklore is mainly filled around events, the are very active based. Folklore is more about events and action more than dialogue and emotions.

Folklore have very straight forward messages and morals to their stories, no sub plots.

Folklores aren’t for the elite or the rich, they are aimed at the working class and about the working class. They are stories the working class can relate to so the characters aren’t the social elite, whereas is classic mythology lots of the stories are about gods and kings.

Folklore is the product of lots of different stories come together, it is almost impossible to tell where the source came from.

In folklore it’s important to think about ‘folk’ and ‘lore’ instead of just ‘folklore’ – folklore is stories based at folk. Authors always think about authorial production (production from the author) when writing but it is important to think of readerly reception as well.  Folklore is created with the audience in mind so these stories can be past down easily through generations. They are stories which people can relate to, they have unique plot lines which stand out so the audience can remember them more and have important morals which teach the folk lessons of life.

Supernatural abilities dominate folklore plots.

Mark Hearld studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art and then completed an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art, London. His work is based on his observations of the natural world, influenced by mid twentieth century Neo-Romanticism and the gaiety of 1930s Modernism.

I really admire Mark’s loose collaged style, he combines beautifully detailed illustrations with bold brush strokes, spray paint and collage to create unique compositions. His playful, experimental style always has individual and different outcomes, each which I really love. Within my work I want to experiment more with collage, masking fluid, paints and inks to try and create more happy accidents.

Once there was a Fox who lived in a deep, dense forest. For as long as Fox could remember, his only friend had been Star, who lit the forest paths each night. But then one night Star was not there, and Fox had to face the forest all alone.

A story about love, loss and learning to accept change. The Fox and the Star is Coralie’s first work as an author/illustrator, spread across 64 highly illustrated pages. I got this illustrated book for Christmas and was inspired by the limited colour palette, noting how well it worked using a small amount of colours and lots of linear detail work.

A poem of Little Red Riding Hood retold by Carol Ann Duffy, an interesting reimagining of a classic story.

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
Into playing fields, the factory, allotments
Kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men
The silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan
Till you came at last to the edge of the woods
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
In his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw
Red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
He had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me
Sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink

My first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods
Away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
Lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake
My stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
Snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

But got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night
Breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
What little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?1
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
And went in search of a living bird – white dove –

Which flew, straight, from my hands to his open mouth
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said
Licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
Of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head
Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood

But then I was young – and it took ten years
In the woods to tell that a mushroom
Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out
Season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
As he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
The glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarves, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, mermaids, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments. The term is mainly used for stories with origins in European tradition and, at least in recent centuries, mostly relates to children’s literature. Fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics, they usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and actual places, people, and events; they take place once upon a time rather than in actual times. Fairy tales are found in oral and in literary form, many of today’s fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared, with variations, in multiple cultures around the world.

The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls; youngest sons and gallant princes; ogres, giants, dragons, and trolls; wicked stepmothers and false heroes; fairy godmothers and other magical helpers, often talking horses, or foxes, or birds; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions.

The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this, the history of their development is necessarily obscure and blurred.

Fairy tales are stories that range from those originating in folk lore to more modern stories defined as literary fairy tales. A modern definition of the fairy tale, as provided by Jens Tismar’s monologue in German, is a story that differs “from an oral folk tale”; written by “a single identifiable author”; can be characterised as “simple and anonymous”; and exists in a mutable and difficult to define genre with a close relationship to folktales.

The fairytales I’m most interested in are:

Snow White

Once upon a time there lived a lovely princess with fair skin and blue eyes. She was so fair that she was named Snow White. Her mother died when Snow White was a baby and her father married again. This queen was very pretty but she was also very cruel. The wicked stepmother wanted to be the most beautiful lady in the kingdom and she would often ask her magic mirror, “Mirror! Mirror on the wall! Who is the fairest of them all?” And the magic mirror would say, “You are, Your Majesty!” But one day, the mirror replied, “Snow White is the fairest of them all!” The wicked queen was very angry and jealous of Snow White. She ordered her huntsman to take Snow White to the forest and kill her. “I want you to bring back her heart,” she ordered. But when the huntsman reached the forest with Snow White, he took pity on her and set her free. He killed a deer and took its heart to the wicked queen and told her that he had killed Snow White. Snow White wandered in the forest all night, crying.

When it was daylight, she came to a tiny cottage and went inside. There was nobody there, but she found seven plates on the table and seven tiny beds in the bedroom. She cooked a wonderful meal and cleaned the house and tired, finally slept on one of the tiny beds. At night, the seven dwarfs who lived in the cottage came home and found Snow White sleeping. When she woke up and told them her story, the seven dwarfs asked her to stay with them. When the dwarfs were away, Snow White would make delicious meals for them. The dwarfs loved her and cared for her. Every morning, when they left the house, they instructed her never to open the door to strangers.

Meanwhile, in the palace, the wicked queen asked, “Mirror! Mirror on the Who is the fairest of them all?’

The mirror replied, White is the fairest of them all! She lives with the seven dwarfs in the woods!” The wicked stepmother was furious. She was actually a witch knew how to make magic potions. She now made a poisonous potion and dipped a shiny red apple into it. Then she disguised herself as an old peasant woman and went to the woods with the apple. She knocked on the cottage door and said “Pretty little child! Let me in! Look what I have for you!” White said, “I am so sorry, old lady, I cannot let you in! The seven dwarfs have told me not to talk to strangers!” But then, Snow White saw the shiny red apple, and opened the door. The wicked witch offered her the apple and when she took a bite poor Snow White fell into a deep sleep. The wicked stepmother went back to the palace and asked the mirror, “Mirror! Mirror on the wall! Who is the fairest of them all?” The mirror replied, “You are, Your Majesty!” and she was very happy.

When the seven dwarfs came home to find Snow White lying on the floor, they were very upset. They cried all night and then built a glass coffin for Snow White. They kept the coffin in front of the cottage. One day, Prince Charming was going past the cottage and he saw Snow White lying in the coffin. He said to the dwarfs, “My! My! She is so beautiful! I would like to kiss her!” And he did. Immediately, Snow White opened her eyes. She was alive again! The Prince and the seven dwarfs were very happy. Prince Charming married Snow White and took her to his palace and lived happily ever after.

Moral: Don’t be vain or selfish as it never turns out well. Be selfless and caring and your good values will be rewarded.

Ways I’m thinking of retelling the story:

The evil stepmother looks constantly at her phone asking the question ‘who is the fairest of them all?’, she always finds that Snow White has way more likes and followers than she ever has and she’s very jealous. She tries her hardest to take better selfies than Snow White but she always fails. She tries to troll Snow White and create hate for her using hashtags but it only makes people dislike her and she ends up losing lots of followers due to her vain ways.

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel are children whose father is a woodcutter. When a great famine settles over the land, the woodcutter’s abusive second wife proposes to take the children into the woods and abandon them there, so that she and her husband will not starve. The woodcutter at first opposes the plan, but finally and reluctantly submits to his wife’s scheme. Hansel and Gretel have overheard them. After the adults have gone to bed, Hansel sneaks out of the house and gathers made white pebbles, then returns to Gretel, assuring her that God will not forsake them.

The next day, the family walks deep into the woods, and Hansel lays a trail of white pebbles. After their parents leave them, the children wait for the moon to rise before following the pebbles back home. They return home safely, much to their stepmother’s frustration. Once again, provisions become scarce, and the stepmother angrily orders her husband to take the children farther into the woods and leave them there to starve. Hansel and Gretel attempt to leave the house to gather more pebbles, but find the doors locked and escape impossible.

The following morning, the family treks into the woods. Hansel takes a slice of bread and leaves a trail of bread crumbs to follow home. However, after they are once again abandoned, the children find that birds have eaten the crumbs and they are lost in the woods.

After days of wandering, they follow a beautiful white bird to a clearing in the woods, where they discover a cottage built of bread and cakes, with windowpanes of sugar. Hungry and tired, the children begin to eat parts of the house when the door opens. An old woman, leaning on a crutch, emerges and lures them inside, offering dinner and cozy beds. The children do not know that their supposed benefactor is a bloodthirsty witch, who built her house of dainties to lure children to her so she may cook and eat them.

The following morning the witch locks Hansel in a cage, and forces Gretel to be her slave. The witch force-feeds Hansel regularly to fatten him up. She regularly demands that Hansel offer his finger for her to examine, but he cleverly proffers a bone instead. Because she is half-blind, she is fooled into thinking Hansel is still too thin to eat. After four weeks of this, the witch grows impatient and decides to eat Hansel anyway.

The witch prepares the oven for Hansel, but decides to kill Gretel as well. She coaxes Gretel to open the oven and prods her to lean over in front of it to see whether the fire is hot enough. Sensing the witch’s intent, Gretel pretends that she does not understand what she is being told to do. Infuriated, the witch demonstrates, and Gretel instantly shoves her into the oven and slams and bolts the door shut. Gretel frees Hansel, and the pair discover chests of precious stones. Taking the jewels with them, they set off for home.

A swan ferries them across an expanse of water. Their father is overjoyed to find Hansel and Gretel alive, and tells them that their stepmother has died. The family is now rich, thanks to the witch’s treasure, and they live happily ever after.

Moral: Don’t talk to strangers.

Ways I’m thinking of retelling the story: Hansel and Gretel have GPS thanks to their new smartphones their parents got them so they contacted their parents to pick them up and also got the evil old woman arrested whilst they were at it. Always keep your phone on you and your location services on, and no need for breadcrumbs thanks to phones! Before Hansel and Gretel left they took a bunch of selfies in the cool gingerbread house which was very photo worthy. And on top of everything, the gingerbread house was put to auction for charity and sold for thousands because it was such an amazing site made out of candy.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking wolves are attacking his flock. When one actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In later English-language poetic versions of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy.

Moral: Don’t lie because even when liars tell the truth, no one believes them.

Ways I’m thinking of retelling the story: A boy kept going on facebook rants about how dangerous wolves were, this created heated debates between himself and animal rights activists who were campaigning for endangered species like wolves. The boy went on and on and it got him the reputation of being really annoying on social media so people started unfriending him to avoid seeing his facebook rants.

Little Red Riding Hood

The story revolves around a girl called Little Red Riding Hood. In the Grimms’ and Perrault’s versions of the tale, she is named after the red hooded cape/cloak that she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother. In the Grimms’ version, her mother had ordered her to stay strictly on the path.

A Big Bad Wolf wants to eat the girl and the food in the basket. He secretly stalks her behind trees, bushes, shrubs, and patches of little and tall grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood, and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests that the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother’s house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole (in some stories, he locks her in the closet) and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.

When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. Little Red then says, “What a deep voice you have!” (“The better to greet you with”, responds the wolf), “Goodness, what big eyes you have!” (“The better to see you with”, responds the wolf), “And what big hands you have!” (“The better to hug/grab you with”, responds the wolf), and lastly, “What a big mouth you have” (“The better to eat you with!”, responds the wolf), at which point the wolf jumps out of bed and eats her up too. Then he falls asleep. In Charles Perrault’s version of the story (the first version to be published), the tale ends here. However, in later versions the story continues generally as follows:

A woodcutter in the French version, but a hunter in the Brothers Grimm and traditional German versions, comes to the rescue and with his axe cuts open the sleeping wolf. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They then fill the wolf’s body with heavy stones. The wolf awakens and tries to flee, but the stones cause him to collapse and die. Sanitized versions of the story have the grandmother locked in the closet instead of eaten and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the lumberjack as the wolf advances on her rather than after she is eaten where the woodcutter kills the wolf with his axe.

Moral: The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that. It also warns about the dangers of not obeying one’s mother.

Charles Perrault – ‘From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!’

Ways I’m thinking of retelling the story:

With the new dating app Tinder, Little Red was able to decide with the swipe of her thumb whether she liked the look of a guy or not. She found one quite handsome fella but decided his ears were too big for her taste so she swiped left. Little did she know she just saved her and her grandmother’s life.

OR Little Red was the victim to a sexual assault from the wolf but instead of getting the justice she deserved, she was victim blamed. People blamed her for the red, promiscuous outfit and red lips she was wearing saying she was asking for it. And the wolf got off scotch free.

Little Mermaid

When the Little Mermaid rises up to the surface and watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honour of a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a safe distance. A violent storm hits, sinking the boat, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here, she waits until a young woman from the temple and her ladies in waiting find him. To her dismay, the prince never sees the Little Mermaid or even realises that it was she who had originally saved his life.

The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch in a dangerous part of the ocean. The witch willingly helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice, and she warns her that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body, yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives. In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam upon the waves.

After she agrees to the arrangement, the Little Mermaid swims to the surface near the prince’s palace and drinks the potion. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace, even though she is considered dumb and mute by everyone in the kingdom. Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step. Soon, the Little Mermaid becomes the prince’s favorite companion and accompanies him on many of his outings. When the prince’s parents encourage their son to marry the neighboring princess in an arranged marriage, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess from the neighboring kingdom is the temple girl. The prince declares his love for her, and the royal wedding is announced at once.

The prince and princess celebrate their new marriage on a wedding ship, and the Little Mermaid’s heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has sacrificed and of all the pain she has endured for the prince. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters rise out of the water and bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. If the Little Mermaid kills the prince and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid once more, all of her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family.

However, the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his new bride, and she throws the knife and herself off the ship into the water just as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warm sun and discovers that she has turned into a luminous and ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. As the Little Mermaid ascends into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters who tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. Because of her selflessness, she will be given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds to mankind for 300 years and will one day rise up into the Kingdom of God.

Moral:

Ways I’m thinking of retelling the story:

The Little Mermaid became obsessed with a boy who met on the Internet, she followed his social media accounts and fell in love with him. Desperate to be with him she began stalking all of his past lovers and found out that him ‘type’ was girls with feet. So she took lots of great selfies without her tail in the pictures and uploaded them to the internet. These photos got the boys attention and they began talking, everything was going great until the boy decided he fancied a new girl. The Little Mermaid was sad and close to the edge but then she met another guy who had a fetish for mermaids and they all lived happily ever after.

Pinocchio

Geppetto was a carpenter who made wooden toys for the children of his village. One day, he made a wooden puppet. As soon as he had finished, the puppet came alive and began to dance and sing. “Why, you are alive!” he said. “I said. I shall call you Pinocchio. You shall be the son I never had.” The next day, Geppetto said, “You must go to school.” “No, I won’t’ go!” said Pinocchio very rudely. Geppetto boxed his ears. A policeman passing by saw Geppetto boxing Pinocchio’s ears. He thought that Geppetto was going to hurt Pinocchio badly. So he marched him off to jail for the night.

When Geppetto returned home, he sent Pinocchio to school. On the way back home, Pinocchio wandered here and there. He stopped to see a puppet show. He began dancing with the puppets. The puppet master gave Pinocchio five gold coins and said, “Give these to your father.” Then Pinocchio met a cunning cat and a shy fox. They told him if he planted the coins under a tree, he would get many more in the morning. So Pinocchio planted the coins and went to sleep under the tree.

The cat and fox tied Pinocchio to the tree, took the coins and ran away. A kind fairy, dressed in blue, set Pinocchio free. Pinocchio began making up a story to tell the Blue fairy. Then a strange thing happened. Pinocchio’s nose began to grow longer and longer. The more he spoke, the longer it grew. “Stop!” said Pinocchio. “It won’t stop. Every time you tell a lie, your nose will grow longer,” said the Blue Fairy. “Please make it stop,” said Pinocchio. “I promise not to lie again.”

The next day, on his way to school, Pinocchio met a boy who said, “Come away with me to Funland.” “In Funland every day is a holiday!” the boy said. “There are toys and games and sweets. And best of all, no lessons to learn!” So Pinocchio rushed off with the boy to Funland. He had lots of fun playing and eating. Suddenly, Pinocchio and the other boys found their ears growing longer. They were turning into donkeys! The wizard of Funland had cast a spell on them. As they wandered around, they came to a circus. The ringmaster made Pinocchio work for the circus. There, Pinocchio hurt his leg while doing tricks. The angry ringmaster threw him into the sea.

In the water, the spell was broken. Pinocchio became a puppet once more. A whale that was swimming by opened its huge mouth and swallowed Pinocchio. In the Whale’s stomach, Pinocchio saw Geppetto in his boat. “I was looking for you when the whale swallowed me up. I am so glad to have found you!” he said. They hugged each other in delight. “I shall be a good boy from now on,” promised Pinocchio.When the whale was asleep, they crept out of its huge mouth and sailed home. When they reached home, Geppetto fell ill. Pinocchio fed him hot soup and looked after him. “I will go to school and work hard so that I can earn lots of money,” said Pinocchio. “You will never have to work again.”

So Pinocchio studied hard in the school. Then one day a wonderful thing happened. The Blue Fairy appeared and said, “Pinocchio, you are brave and have a kind heart. You deserve to become a real boy.” So she turned him into a little boy. Geppetto and Pinocchio lived together happily.

Moral: Don’t lie, be honest and understand the differences of right and wrong. Listen to your conscience and don’t be selfish

Ways in which I’m thinking of retelling the story:

Trump kept making promises and saying he would do things he knew he wouldn’t really on through with on Twitter in the run up to the US elections. Little did the public know, his nose grew with every lie he told but because he was able to hide behind her computer screen no one ever found out. And so Trump won the election…

Thumbelina

In the first English translation of 1847 by Mary Howitt, the tale opens with a beggar woman giving a peasant’s wife a barleycorn in exchange for food. Once planted, a tiny girl, Thumbelina, emerges from its flower. One night, Thumbelina, asleep in her walnut-shell cradle, is carried off by a toad who wants her as a bride for her son. With the help of friendly fish and a butterfly, Thumbelina escapes the toad and her son, and drifts on a lily pad until captured by a stag beetle who later discards her when his friends reject her company.

Thumbelina tries to protect herself from the elements, but when winter comes, she is in desperate straits. She is finally given shelter by an old field mouse and tends her dwelling in gratitude. The mouse suggests Thumbelina marry her neighbor, a mole, but Thumbelina finds repulsive the prospect of being married to such a creature because he spent all his days underground and never saw the sun or sky. The field mouse keeps pushing Thumbelina into the marriage, saying the mole is a good match for her, and does not listen to her protests.

At the last minute, Thumbelina escapes the situation by fleeing to a far land with a swallow she nursed back to health during the winter. In a sunny field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a tiny flower-fairy prince just her size and to her liking, and they wed. She receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower, and a new name, Maia.

Moral: Be happy with who you are and only your loved ones opinions matter.

Ways in which I’m thinking of retelling the story:

Thumbelina was unhappy with the way she looked and her height but thankfully with the help of the internet she became an internet sensation with her hashtag #smallgirlproblems. She got lots of love messages which helped her confidence.

 

 

Only a decade ago, social media was little more than a budding trend. Back in 2005, Facebook was still in it’s early stages of its spread across the world. Twitter appeared around the same time and Google+ and Pinterest didn’t even come onto the scene until Fast forward to 2014 and social media has become not only a key part of the modern lifestyle, but a useful marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. Now there are whole range of companies that specialise in social media who’s one goal is to get other companies social media presence up. And if a company isn’t employing another company to manage their social media then they have a whole job role just for updating social media platforms. 

People check their phones or computers every hour either for personal or business reasons. Social networking is now embedded itself in our culture with generations of kids who can’t even conceive of a world without smart phones. But what are the pros and cons to having social media so ingrained into our lives?

The Good:

Immediate Access to Information:

Social media is also very helpful for expanding our sources of content as a whole. With so much being blogged and written, then curated and shared proactively, the volume of content has grown exponentially. Now, there is no shortage of viewpoints and sources from which we can draw our own conclusions about what is really happening in the world.

Pervasive Connectivity to Others:

Back in the day when a call came in, there was no caller ID. You just picked it up and said, “Hello.” It was sometimes hard to catch up to people, so you had to hand write and send a letter to communicate when you were both leading busy lives. Today, if you can’t catch someone on the phone, you can leave a voice mail or send a text. Or even better, tweet, Facebook message, or touch base in some other means. You can see what others are doing within seconds of them doing it, assuming they share it on a social network of some sort. It’s not hard to catch up with someone if they want you to find them.

Globalised Voices:

Today, all we have to do is login to our platform of choice. We can rant, rave, tell jokes, share images, and generally mix and mingle to our heart’s content. For those of us who can write, it takes only a couple of minutes to create a new blog and start putting our thoughts into words.
It is far easier to do something remarkable and noticeable, and have it reach people across the planet, than it has been at any time in our history. We now have truly globalised voices.

Hashtags:

Hashtags allow you to tie your voice to a specific trend, event, or topic, and filter out everything that didn’t relate to the hashtag. It’s great for focusing conversations and finding information on whatever subject you wish to search. They have become the culture of online discussion. Another great internet invention is the meme – hilarious and relatable. Although something controversial and occasionally mean.

More Even Playing Field for Businesses:

Social media enables businesses across the world to amplify their message in a way never thought possible only a decade or two ago. Social networks are fast and very cheap ways for companies to get across their messages to a very wide audience.

The Bad:

Selfies:

Whether its a shirtless guy in a mirror or a girl making awful duck faces – selfies are here to stay and they suck. They are often narcissistic or brag about the cool places you’ve visited or how happy you are (seem). The Kardashians are known particularly for this. This can encouraged young girls to pose in minimal clothing and in provocative ways, inspired by their celebrity role models who rule social media. Some people compare themselves to these celebrity like figures with ridiculous bodies, making them feel insecure about their own bodies and feel inadequate.

Political Tirades:

When it comes to politics, religion, or any other very personal area of life, discussion gets contentious almost immediately. If you have a different belief system from someone else, you are both more likely to fight to defend it rather than cave to the other side of the argument. These are very delicate topics, and it’s too easy for the conversation to devolve into personal attacks and negative judgments of each others’ characters.

Hiding Behind Anonymity:

With the ability to shield your identity on the internet, some people behave much worse when their true identity is masked. Trolling (being a mean bully on the internet) makes social media less enjoyable and productive for all. It has lead to victims feeling depressed, isolated and had some awful consequences like teenagers taking their own lives.

Stalking:

With access to millions of people’s pictures, information and details – you can spend days stalking whoever you want and be able to find out lots of information about them. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing for them or for you. Many a person has become obsessed with the ability to stalk. You can see when someone has been last active, what they have been up to, where they have been, who they are dating etc. And if you are trying to get over an ex – the ability to find out what they are up to won’t help you at all. Or even if you are stalking your ex’s new boyfriend/girlfriend – how that’s not good for anyone. And all this time the person you are stalking has no idea you are stalking them, you could have a stalker without you knowing at all… And on top of this just the amount of time people have spent stalking other people – what a waste of time.

It is in our nature to tell stories and inform others of our life events. Storytelling, whether factual or fictional, is an intrinsic human characteristic. However, the way we communicate with others has changed drastically over time. Storytelling originated with visual stories, such as cave drawings, and then shifted to oral traditions, in which stories were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. There was then a shift to words formed into narratives, including written, printed and typed stories.

Due to the use of advancing technologies such as the printing press, the camera and the internet and its social media platforms, the way we tell others stories and keep ourselves informed about current topics has shifted to a more all-encompassing experience. Technology has allowed humans to utilize all forms of storytelling through the years: visual stories in photographs, spoken stories in videos and recordings and written words on blogs and statuses.

Oral tradition is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved and transmitted orally from one generation to another.

Oral traditions have changed but have not disappeared, but their power and use remain. The image of an oral telling may be caught on paper, film or in digital format. However, the presence of teller and audience, and the immediacy of the moment are not fully captured by any form of technology. It always changes from one telling to the next depending on the voice and mood of the storyteller, the place of its telling, the response of the audience. For hundreds of years prior to the invention of writing, which is a very recent discovery in the history of humankind, oral tradition served as the sole means of communication available for forming and maintaining societies and their institutions.

The use of technology has shaped the way that we interact with others and how we tell stories. Starting from around the year 1800, technology has contributed to the creation of photography, motion pictures, telephones, radio, TV, digital media, mobile media and social media; the current most influential form of communication is social media.

Media platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have grown in popularity in the 21st century. All of these platforms allow users to express their thoughts in a public manner with everyone on the Internet or to choose with whom to share their information. Twitter and Facebook allow users to post statuses, photos and videos of memories and personal stories. Instagram, a photographic-based platform, enables users to share only photos or videos.

Social media has allowed us to transfer information instantly and given us the ability to portray ourselves to other people in whatever way we want them to see us, creating a new form of human communication.

Oral tradition represents a vital and multifunctional means of verbal communication that supports diverse activities in diverse cultures. As humankind’s first and still most ubiquitous mode of communication, it bears a striking resemblance to one of the newest communication technologies, the Internet. Like oral tradition, the Internet works by varying within limits, as when software architects use specialised language to craft Web sites or when a user’s clicking on a link opens up multiple (but not an infinite group of) connections. Both the Internet and oral tradition operate via navigation through webs of options; both depend upon multiple, distributed authorship; both work through rule-governed processes rather than fossilised texts; and both ultimately derive their strength from their ability to change and adapt.

A more contemporary definition of folk is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. “Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family”. This expanded social definition of folk supports a wider view of the material considered to be folklore artefacts. These now include “things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)”. The folklorist is a discipline which studies the traditional artefacts of a group.

Folklore was the original term used in this discipline. Its synonym, folklife, came into circulation in the second half of the 20th century, at a time when some researchers felt that the term folklore was too closely tied exclusively to oral lore. The new term folklife is meant to categorically include all aspects of a folk culture, not just the oral traditions. All professionals within this field, regardless of the other words they use, consider themselves to be folklorists.

Many Walt Disney films and products belong in this category of folklorism; the fairy tales, originally told around a winter fire, have become animated film characters, stuffed animals and bed linens.

With the invention of the internet, the transmission of individual folklore artefacts to a worldwide audience is done in a flash. We are no longer dependent upon individual performers to find us with their song and dance; now they just broadcast across the net. An example of this is electronic joking, which has become as common than oral joking and can reach a much larger audience with just a button click. The folk group is no longer exclusively defined by physical presence and locality, it also exists in the connectivity of cyberspace. With this, diffusion of folklore is skewed away from a live performance toward a multiplicity of new venues and social groupings. These new transmission modes apply not only to oral folklore. Traditional skills and handicrafts can be videotaped and uploaded to YouTube, enabling any interested individual anywhere in the world access to this record of specific traditional skills. No longer anchored in time and space, both the social group and the channels of folklore transmission have expanded across the globe.

The study of folklore was professionalized and solidified by Alan Dundes (1934-2005). Dundes taught folklore at University of California, Berkeley and wrote numerous books on the subject, including The Study of Folklore (1965), which established popular definitions of folklore, the folk, and the theoretical and methodological practices of folklorists.

While many folklorists throughout the 20^th century lamented the introduction of modern technology as a death sentence for folklore, Dundes instead argued, “technology isn’t stamping out folklore; rather it is becoming a vital factor in the transmission of folklore and it is providing an exciting source of inspiration for the generation of new folklore. The rise of the computer symbolizes the impact of technology upon the modern world. My point is that there is folklore of and about the computer”

In forms as diverse as jokes, contemporary legends, local rumors, folk belief, music, and storytelling, this ‘e-lore- is well documented and easy to assimilate into already-established genres”. Digital folklorists have studied phenomena like the meme, chain-emails, and online memorial pages for deceased individuals, otherwise known as digital graveyards. In the book Folklore and the Internet, Simon Bronner coined the term “the folk universe of cyberspace,” noting, “The folk realm is not located in a socioeconomic sector or particular nationality but instead represents a participatory process that some posters refer to as the democratic or open web”

One of the most interesting elements of digital folklore is the creation of Internet urban legends. Urban legends are “‘stories of unusual, humorous or horrible events that contain themes related to the modern world, are told as something that did or may have happened, variations of which are found in numerous places and times, and contain moral implications’”.Although these stories can be exchanged and replicated through oral interaction, print media sources like tabloids have increasingly reproduced urban legends, ostensibly lending a sense of legitimacy to the stories. Urban legends are also migratory, in that they can be transmitted across folk groups and geographic barriers, adjusted to fit the particular cultural milieu in which they are told (Brunvand 2001). Although the Internet has increased the transmission and dispersal of urban legends, the web has also begun to generate its own urban legends or cyberlore. Websites like Creepypasta host competitions for the creation of new urban legends, while others document the legends embedded in computer and video games.