Janet L. Langlois

Bio: Janet L. Langlois is an academic researcher from Wayne State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Legend & Rumor. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 11 publications receiving 252 citations.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings

Abstract: The Vanishing Hitchhiker was Professor Brunvand's first popular book on urban legends, and it remains a classic. The culmination of twenty years of collection and research, this book is a must-have for urban legend lovers.

"Celebrating Arabs": Tracing Legend and Rumor Labyrinths in Post-9/11 Detroit

Abstract: This article examines one instance of a widely spread rumor (incipient legend) circulated via e-mail in northwest Detroit that Arab employees at a Middle Eastern restaurant cheered when they saw television footage ofthe planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It argues that rumor and legend scholars, especially those examining alternative communication paths including Internet transmission, should work to retain the complexity of performance-oriented studies in their comparative analyses. It takes "the middle road" in building a case for examining, whenever possible, the complex intertwining of localized and globalized "folkloric space" for readings that are richly textured and evocative of a variety of social conditions.

The Belle Isle Bridge Incident: Legend Dialectic and Semiotic System in the 1943 Detroit Race Riots

Abstract: ALTHOUGH TAMARA is one of those cities Italo Calvino encounters in the fabled East of Marco Polo's 14th century, and Detroit is its antithesis in almost every way, his proposition linking city, sign and discourse connects them. The question, shared by many anthropologists, folklorists, literary critics, semioticians and sociologists, of whether or not every culture or every era has characteristic communicative forms, has been pulled into a circumscribed urban space in the constricted time span of a visit. What is the city's discourse? How does it name itself?

Confessions of a Legend Hunter in the U.S.A.

Abstract: L’auteur decrit le terrain d’une « chasseur de legendes » aux Etats-Unis depuis les annees 1970. Elle demontre ses differentes pratiques, en commencant par une ethnographie classique, puis une ethnographie intime, en passant par une ethnographie de l’ombre, pour aboutir a une forme d’ethnographie partagee.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Abstract: From the Publisher: A Question of Identity Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

Science vs conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of misinformation.

Abstract: The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around shared beliefs, interests, worldviews and narratives In spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called collective intelligence unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories—eg, chemtrails, reptilians or the Illuminati—are pervasive in online social networks (OSN) In this work we study, on a sample of 12 million of individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives—ie main stream scientific and conspiracy news—are consumed and shape communities on Facebook Our results show that polarized communities emerge around distinct types of contents and usual consumers of conspiracy news result to be more focused and self-contained on their specific contents To test potential biases induced by the continued exposure to unsubstantiated rumors on users’ content selection, we conclude our analysis measuring how users respond to 4,709 troll information—ie parodistic and sarcastic imitation of conspiracy theories We find that 7792% of likes and 8086% of comments are from users usually interacting with conspiracy stories

Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority1

Abstract: Using stories of citizens’ resistance to legalized authority, the authors propose that the act of storytelling extends temporally and socially what might otherwise be an individual, discrete, and ephemeral transaction. Adopting a concept of power as a contingent outcome in a social transaction, they emphasize that not only dominant, institutionalized power but also resistance to institutionalized authority draws from a common pool of sociocultural resources, including symbolic, linguistic, organizational, and material phenomena. Although such acts of resistance may not cumulate to produce institutional change, they may nonetheless have consequences beyond the specific social transaction: the authors propose that a chief means for extending the social consequences of resistance is to transform an act of resistance into a story about resistance. Based upon an appreciation of the structural conditions of power and authority, stories of resistance can become instructions about both the sources and the limitat...

Emotional selection in memes: the case of urban legends.

Abstract: This article explores how much memes like urban legends succeed on the basis of informational selection (i.e., truth or a moral lesson) and emotional selection (i.e., the ability to evoke emotions like anger, fear, or disgust). The article focuses on disgust because its elicitors have been precisely described. In Study 1, with controls for informational factors like truth, people were more willing to pass along stories that elicited stronger disgust. Study 2 randomly sampled legends and created versions that varied in disgust; people preferred to pass along versions that produced the highest level of disgust. Study 3 coded legends for specific story motifs that produce disgust (e.g., ingestion of a contaminated substance) and found that legends that contained more disgust motifs were distributed more widely on urban legend Web sites. The conclusion discusses implications of emotional selection for the social marketplace of ideas.