Work began with research on digital folklore/heritage, folklore archives and digitisation, and communities that make up Norway historically and today. This included literature reviews on published research, examining government data and classifications, and exploring contents and operation of NFS. I had training on R (programme for statistical computing and data visualisation), as I first intended to mine data from social media API sites using this programme. However, due to changes in the structure of API sites of target social media sites, and reflecting on the data I should collect, I changed my approach and created a new method. I applied this new method to make a more focused investigation of digital folklore produced predominantly on Reddit, as Reddit groups closely reflect how offline folk groups form, operate and interact. I focused my study on memes, as these are quick to identify, and comprise both textual and visual elements. I collected memes and their metadata (time/date, location, likes) and comments by capturing them as PDFs. I thematically categorised the memes and performed textual and visual analyses. I contextualised these memes to identify any broader social, cultural or political prompts for their creation, and undertook dialogical analysis on any comments associated with the memes, as this further reflected the social and cultural interactions of the online folk group. I explored the contents of the folklore archive to identify various themes to which the digital folklore could be connected, thus broadening the way the archive's contents are approached, and showing their relevance to contemporary communities and issues. As well as examining digital folklore and the archive specifically, I investigated the relationship between heritage institutions, folklore work and the public to understand the current state of how heritage institutions such as folklore archives engage, and have the potential to engage, with various publics. This also considered questions of representation: who is responsible for heritage institutions and folklore work, inclusion/exclusion, who is being targeted for participation in/engagement with heritage institutions, and what this means for broader questions of identity and heritage in Europe. The project was disseminated at various conferences, talks and workshops, and will also be published in academic articles and a public-facing publication. My work on digital folklore will also be presented at a conference that brings together both academics and non-academics.
