Folklore in Social Networks (Using the Example of Twitter and Telegram)

Van Tinyan' Postgraduate Student, Department of the Russian Language and Methods of its Teaching, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) 117198, Russia, Moscow, ul. miklukho-Maklaya, 6, 6 1042218032@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

 One of the signs of the national identity of peoples is their oral folk art, which is otherwise called folklore.

This work reflects the peculiarities of people's everyday life, their character traits, therefore, in order to preserve the identity of peoples, it is important to pay special attention to their oral folk art.

In the Dictionary of the Russian language by S. I. Ozhegov, "folklore" means folk art or a set of folk ritual actions ^[7]. In the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia edited by E. M. Zhukov, "folklore" was designated as poetry from the people, as oral folk art of the broad masses of the population, a combination of these types of creativity. As society developed, new forms and varieties emerged in it that reflected the interests of various social strata of the population, or the social and everyday characteristics of a particular group of people (production, social organizing, ceremonial, gaming, aesthetic, cognitive genres, etc.). The development of writing influenced the emergence of new, previously non-existent forms of folklore, such as an epic, a fairy tale, a song, etc. ^[11]. According to V. N. Poklonskaya, despite the constant changes and the emergence of new forms and varieties of folklore, it has always had some characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of folk art. Among them: oral, collectivity, nationality, variability, combination of words with artistic elements of other arts. These characteristics may vary slightly, but, in general, they are more or less stable in the works of Russian researchers who have studied folklore ^{[9, pp. 210-211]}.

In the opinion of modern authors, folklore is the reaction of people to this or that event taking place in their lives. Such events give us an idea of what is contained in a person's perception of an incident in his life ^{[8, pp. 145-157]}.

One of the main events of the XXI century was the spread of the Internet and digital means of communication, which affected the way of life of people.  If initially folklore was created and broadcast mostly through oral folk art, today the Internet communication of various groups has become the main platform for creative activity in creating works of folk art. For example, there are many channels in the Telegram social network, the participants of which are people united by one interest. Such a channel can be Covid Resistance, which is one of the largest platforms for generating and replicating fakes about the Covid-19 pandemic. They replicated various statements on the topic of folklore, which received a huge number of reactions: "I got vaccinated – walk boldly!"; "Everyone is a blacksmith of his own antibodies"; "Rome was not vaccinated in one day"; "Hand washes hand, preferably thirty seconds."

The Internet, as an integral part of the life of more than half of the population, is both a carrier of works of folk art and its creator. In the first case, we are talking about social networking sites, forums, channels, groups, chats in which information is stored. In the second case, we are talking about the same platforms, but now understood as a means of active communication and creativity of a person in which something new is already being created. Today we can constantly observe how certain social, political and economic events cause a heated discussion on social networks, a public response. For example, such an event could be the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a violent reaction of society, especially during the introduction of lockdown and provoked the appearance of a huge number of folklore texts. So they wrote on social networks: "The authorities are introducing a lockdown for a week; the Russians are Gena, I'm in Egypt"; "The personal level of lockdown has stopped dividing T–shirts into homemade and non–homemade"; "The very moment when the coronavirus does not end in any way, and the lockdown is being extended and extended." 

Folk art in social networks in the works of various authors has received its name. For example, A. Arkhipova believes that it is most correct to call this phenomenon "Internet folklore". This point of view is shared by other authors, such as O. K. Melnikova, T. I. Suslova and A.V. Savchenko ^{[6, pp. 50-56; 10]}.

According to A.V. Kolistratova, it is more correct to call folklore on the Internet "network folklore", since it is "network connections" in the Internet environment that allow folk art not only to originate within digital platforms, but also to spread with great speed, which is possible precisely thanks to the communicative capabilities of social networks ^{[5, pp. 36-41]}. A.V. Kolistratova writes that the Internet gives three main advantages to users, which allow folklore to form and spread with great speed from small communities of the network to wide groups of the population, among them: virtuality, communication, anonymity.

There are also other related concepts that are determinants of folklore on the Internet. For example, such a concept can be "myth-making" or "fake". They were studied by the domestic author M. V. Zagidullina ^{[4, pp. 37-42]}. Many myths and fictions existed in society during the height of the pandemic, especially often they related to the topic of vaccination. So, for example, the most popular fake and myth of that time was the unproven information that vaccination is a mass action of "chipping" people, which is carried out under the guise of a pandemic by members of the "secret world government". It is worth noting that this myth did not just exist, a huge part of the population willingly believed in it. Also, myths were actively replicated on social networks that people who smoke are less susceptible to infection; alcohol helps fight coronavirus; lemon, ginger and garlic help treat coronavirus.

Thus, today "myth–making" and "fake color" have become extremely relevant, the Internet is the soil for a huge number of fakes, one can even say that it is easier to find unreliable information in it today than something verified.

E. V. Levantseva writes that folklore in social networks is mainly "mediaviruses", namely, dangerous phenomena of communication that "carry risks of infection of the communicative field" ^{[3, pp. 125-130]}.

D. Akarali believes that the main tool for the formation of folklore in social networks are "botnets", the so-called tools for promoting content, which can act as destributers of various information, including folklore ^{[12, pp. 1-15]}. So, for example, the Yandex service has a special "Context" platform, with which you can create ads that will be displayed to Yandex search users when entering any queries. Yandex Context is used not only by advertisers, but also by ordinary people who want to promote this or that information. With the help of the platform, you can also promote other information, for example, about covid. This was how information about vaccination was promoted, points where you can take an analysis for Covid-19 were promoted, advertising about the need to wear masks, gloves and other protective equipment was promoted, and finally, requests for social distance were promoted.

There is another variant of folklore research on the Internet – "meme". These categories have become the main object of research by E. M. Alexandrova, who believes that the rapid growth of visual information has affected the perception and thinking of a person, it has become easier for people to perceive visual material. A meme is a visualized joke, an anecdote that is created by users of social networks and distributed by them to a wide audience. Memes, in her opinion, have become the main form of Internet folklore today ^{[1, pp. 65-69]}. So, for example, a meme with the image of the heroes of the movie "Back to the Future" became popular, one of whom says: "Doc, I need to go to 2020," and the second one answers him: "Hmmm, perhaps it's not worth it, Marty."

Figure 1. Meme about Covid-19 from the movie "Back to the Future"Another popular meme with a photo of a disappointed Will Smith and the caption "People in 2020 who have nothing left to surprise:".

Figure 2. Meme about Covid-19 with Will SmithAnd another popular meme with two versions of the hero of the movie "Aquaman": the first one looks strong and fit, under this picture is the signature "My plans for 2020"; in the second picture is the same person, but has already added a lot of extra pounds with the signature "My life in 2020".

Figure 3. Meme about Covid-19 with the hero of the movie "Aquaman"Thus, we see that today the research of Internet folklore is a rather fragmented layer of scientific research.

The Internet itself is a fairly broad term, it has many structures, associations, properties, characteristics. In science today there is no consolidated research on the topic of folklore on the Internet, and all theoretical developments on this topic are rather related to the study of one or another property of social networks, which affects the formation of folk art. At the same time, the Internet is a holistic phenomenon that needs to be studied in conjunction with all its forms and characteristics, only then it will be possible to get a full and multifaceted picture of a phenomenon, which in our case is folklore.