Tim Tangherlini, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Scandinavian and the Information School, is working to explain the emerging field of computational folklore. In a recent installment of UC Berkeley’s “101 in 101” video series, Tangherlini described how this area brings together technology and traditional storytelling.
“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,” Tangherlini said in the video.
He further explained: “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.”
Tangherlini noted that while folklore was once spread mainly through face-to-face interactions—where peers could moderate or question stories—today’s digital platforms have changed that dynamic. “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.’”
He warned that online communication allows misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread more rapidly and widely than before. According to Tangherlini: “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. 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.”
The approach uses computer science tools such as data collection and algorithmic analysis to examine patterns in storytelling both past and present.
The full video featuring Tangherlini is part of a series highlighting research by UC Berkeley faculty members.
