Digital Horror Hermeneutics
The interpretation of horror that emerges specifically from digital spaces and technologies: creepypasta, webcam ghost sightings, cursed images, deepfake horror, and AI-generated nightmares. Digital horror hermeneutics examines how the unique properties of digital media—virality, editability, endless replication, algorithmic uncanniness—create new forms of fear. It asks: What does it mean to be haunted by a meme? How do glitches in the digital interface produce existential dread? How does the blurring of real and fake online turn the internet itself into a horror text? Digital horror hermeneutics treats the screen as a portal not to information but to the uncanny.
Example: “Her digital horror hermeneutics research focused on ‘backrooms’ videos—liminal spaces rendered in low-poly CGI—showing how the aesthetic of broken simulation taps into fears of digital afterlife and lost reality.”
Digital Horror Hermeneutics by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal April 22, 2026
