Internet Life and Lore in Southeast Asia: Histories, Mythologies and Materialities" is a collaboration between Asia Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Yale-NUS College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Trinity University. The aim of the project is to explore the “lives and lore” of four representative ”online connected worlds” in Southeast Asia, anchored by Singapore as the most IT developed site. Studies in other Southeast Asian countries will also be conducted to give the project a regional, comparative dimension. By “lore” we mean what has traditionally been called “folklore” but needs to be reframed in the internet age, when “folk” are now also online. Taking four basic aspects of folklore as our ‘research tracks’ (storytelling, figures, layering, and rumour) the project aims to test how each has changed (or not) given this new communications medium. The project also means to test three hypotheses through this research, namely: (1) That the assumption of a single, global, monolithic Internet needs to be adjusted to account for multiple internets, and that the diversity of Southeast Asia makes it an excellent site to study this phenomenon; (2) That the multiplicity of online connected worlds are productive of new cultures and social groups, whose speciation is undertheorized and understudied by academics around the world, but particularly in Southeast Asia; (3) That the tracking of internet lore, based on insights from folklore studies but also fields like science and technology studies (STS) and information systems, provides a theoretically and empirically fruitful way to study how online communities form, are maintained, and, occasionally, disappear.