Digital technologies have become increasingly significant in efforts to preserve folklore as a form of intangible cultural heritage. While digital and animated media offer expanded opportunities for access and dissemination, they also raise persistent concerns regarding cultural authenticity, performative loss, and interpretive authority. Many existing digital preservation approaches prioritise fixed documentation or visual representation, often overlooking the performative, adaptive, and mediating processes through which folklore sustains cultural meaning. In response, this paper proposes Participatory Ethno-Animation as a conceptual framework for digital folklore preservation. Grounded in three theoretical principles—performative presence (Bauman, 1977), creative reinterpretation (Hutcheon, 2006), and technological enhancement (Kapaniaris, 2022)—the framework conceptualises authenticity as an emergent outcome arising from the interaction of performance, adaptation, and digital mediation. Rather than treating animation as a representational endpoint, Participatory Ethno-Animation positions animated and digital media as participatory processes that augment storytelling practices while retaining cultural intent. The paper articulates the conceptual structure of the framework, illustrated through a relational model in which authenticity is situated at the intersection of its three core components. As a theoretical contribution, this study does not present empirical findings but offers a focused and coherent framework to inform future research, creative practice, and ethically grounded approaches to digital folklore preservation.