Berserkers to bigfoot: Computational folklore explained in 101 seconds

Quick: Think of “folklore.” Did images of witches, trolls, goblins or other fairytale creatures and stories populate your mind?

Next, think of something “computational.” Did you conjure a spreadsheet? An artificial intelligence prompt window? Zoolander famously looking for the files “in the computer?”

Now put the terms together: “Computational Folklore.” Sounds like a pretty wild collabo, huh? 

Did you imagine a UC Berkeley professor in the Department of Scandinavian and at the Information School who has tracked pop music’s meaning in Korea, studied how conspiracy theories ricochet through the internet or is examining the danger of insane warriors known as “berserkers” in Icelandic sagas? Well, that’s what Tim Tangherlini does. 

“Computational folklore is based on bringing together computational methods with the study of folklore. So this will be everything from fairy tales to legends, to rumors, to even conspiracy theories that you might be familiar with,” explains Tangherlini in this 101 in 101 video, a series that challenges UC Berkeley experts to distill their area of knowledge in only 101 seconds. 

“By computational, I mean everything from gathering the data to making it machine actionable, to using algorithms to find the underlying latent patterns that might give us clues as to how these expressive forms create meaning for the people who use them.”

Folklore, as Tangerhlini explains, was once spread largely by face to face conversation — and even then, your peers might slow your tall tale roll. 

“If I start talking about the bigfoot I met at the 7-11, my friends, you know, will check in with me and they’ll kind of, like, slow me down. Or if I start talking about the Illuminati, they’ll say, ‘Whoa, whoa, Tim, you know, not today.’”

But today, Tangherlini says, the internet and social media have supercharged the spread of conspiracy and misinformation folklore and can be manipulated at scale.

“You might think that you’re communicating with people in your community. And what you might actually be doing is communicating with an army of bots,” says Tangherlini. “This is something that computational folklorists can help with. We can figure out what the narrative frameworks are, and we can also see potentially where those are being manipulated by malign actors.”

Watch through to learn more about the many ways that computational folklore can be used to understand both modern and historical storytelling. Come for the illuminati and the bigfoot, stay to find out what you should do with a berserker if you find yourself in an Icelandic saga.

Watch more 101 in 101 videos featuring UC Berkeley faculty and experts here.