Newslore is a very engaging and accessible book in which folklorist and journalist Russell Frank sets out to examine a particular set of netlore that he dubs newslore, which he describes as “folklore that comments on, and is therefore indecipherable without knowledge of, current events” (7). He ably applies traditional constructions of vernacular culture to contemporary digital contexts by drawing comparison between virtually mediated newslore in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries and existing scholarship on fax and photocopier lore. Frank constructs a volume that is functionally an annotated compendium of newslore in the digital age, collecting various examples of newslore from email forwards and websites, and examining them in broad strokes.
Interestingly, even though Newslore is chiefly a collection of primary texts, Frank does not organize its chapters by focusing on individual genres of newslore. Instead, he tightly focuses each chapter on the topics with which the lore is engaging in a roughly chronological order from 1990 to 2008. This approach allows the reader an exceptionally clear and practicable understanding of Frank’s conception of newslore as folkloric commentary on current events. Frank begins with a wonderful introduction that situates this book as both a folkloristic and journalistic endeavor, and focuses broadly on the history of the field, the history and pervasiveness of humor and social commentary online, and the place of news in these discourses. After his introduction, Frank offers in the first few chapters a wide collection and broad analysis of political humor about political figures, most notably Hillary Clinton in “Where is the Humor: Anti-Hillary Jokes in the News.” What separates these early examples from later chapters on political figures (such as chapter 5’s “It takes a Village Idiot: Bushlore”) is the reliance of the folklore on text-heavy communications. By comparison, later chapters that engage with topics ranging from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to the corporate malfeasance of Enron are marked by the technological addition of visual folk responses to the texts in circulation—notably user manipulated images that have been humorously photoshopped as part of the folkloric discourse.
One of the strengths of Frank’s work is its accessibility. His background as a journalist is unmistakable, and his voice is clear and effective in rendering the entirety of the book highly readable. He is not overly academic in his language, and this works in favor of the subject matter. He explains any jargon or complex idea very well, and ties it to the material he is studying, making the shift from examples to analyses less jarring for the reader. This has the additional benefit of broadening the audience to scholars in other fields, students, and a wide general audience.
It is an inevitable criticism of any work on Internet culture that the technology it addresses will seem dated, particularly to a younger audience in the undergraduate classroom. This critique will certainly grow stronger as this work ages, due to the dynamic nature of computer technologies and the Internet. While Frank does his best to deal with this criticism early on, acknowledging that many of his examples seem dated even prior to publication, it is still noticeable that he culls his collection from digital communication methods that read as positively ancient in terms of computer transmission—email forwards and websites that aggregate newslore. It is somewhat disappointing that Frank does not acknowledge the bourgeoning role of social media (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in the dissemination of newslore. However, this minor quibble aside, what Frank is providing us is not a complete collection of newslore on the Internet. Instead, this study allows us an additional way to conceptualize the field and engage with expressive communication in an online context.
Newslore is a valuable addition to the field of folklore, if only for its impressive collection of newslore in the early digital age. Any scholar who desires to engage with the expressive culture of the Internet would be well served in reading this book, and it has value for a wide range of interdisciplinary fields, notably journalism, and could be equally useful in cultural anthropology, history, and popular culture studies. Thanks largely to Frank’s clear and engaging style, this book is accessible and useful enough for employment in the undergraduate or graduate classroom, though I would caution that some of the language in the materials may seem crude and/or cruel and trigger-warnings may be appropriate. While not a paradigm-shifting work, Newslore does help in building a stronger foundation for expanding the study of folklore and the Internet.
--------
[Review length: 743 words • Review posted on November 12, 2014]