Rituals and Collective Memory in Social Media: A Case Study of the Lantern Festival in Baiqueyuan Town of China

Abstract

The Lantern Festival in Baiqueyuan Town, Guangshan, is a long-standing traditional folk custom and the best-preserved folklore fire celebration in southern Henan Province. Through in-depth interviews, this study exam-ines how the Lantern Festival in Baiqueyuan Town, Guangshan, takes ad-vantage of modern media and plays to its strengths in the context of social media to culturally interpret the Lantern Festival in Baiqueyuan Town, and how the collective memory of the event as a ritual phenomenon is con-structed. The study also examines how the collective memory of the lantern festival as a ritual phenomenon is constructed.