(in .pdf format)

“The Vernacular Web of Participatory Media ”
(in Critical Studies in Media Communication , Volume 25, Number 5, December 2008: 490-513.)
From wikis to blogs, new participatory forms of web-based communication are increasingly common ways for institutions and individuals to communicate. The content these forms produce incorporates elements of both institutional and non-institutional discourse. More than a syncretic pastiche, this content is the product of hybrid agencies made possible by these new forms. Terming this content ‘‘vernacular’’ acknowledges that this hybridity frustrates any reified conception of pure or authentic non-institutional discourse. At the same time, the theory of a ‘‘vernacular web’’ attends to the complex new transformational possibilities of participatory media seem to offer individuals.

“Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web”
(in Journal of American Folklore. Volume 121, Number 480, Spring 2008: 192-218.)
Through the example of a specific blog, this article locates a category of online discourse termed the “vernacular web.” Because the definitive trait of the vernacular is its distinction from the institutional, the vernacular web emerges in specific network locations as a communal invocation of alternate authority. Imagining those invocations as located communication processes, the concept of a vernacular web provides the theoretical language necessary for speaking about the complex hybridity that new communication technologies make possible.

(More Research . . . )