Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web

Abstract

Through the example of a specific blog, this article locates a category of online discourse termed the “vernacular web.” Because the definitive trait of the vernacular is its distinction from the institutional, the vernacular web emerges in specific network locations as a communal invocation of alternate authority. Imagining those invocations as located communication processes, the concept of a vernacular web provides the theoretical language necessary for speaking about the complex hybridity that new communication technologies make possible.