Miquela är en så kallad ”robot-influencer”, vilket bland annat betyder att ”hon” är en virtuell fiktiv karaktär i ett pågående transmedialt narrativ som upprätthålls av företaget Brud. Eftersom Miquela består av datormodifierade bilder och animationer, ser ”hon” uppenbart overklig ut, vilket kan väcka en uncannyvalley effekt hos betraktaren. Arbetet med uppsatsen grundas i ett intresse av att vilja förstå hur något så synbart overkligt kan uppfattas och accepteras socialt som en aktuell (virtuell) influencer. Syftet är därmed att nå en djupare förståelse för hur Miquela visuellt tar sig i uttryck på Instagram. Således genomförs en kvalitativ bild- och textanalys av material från Miquelas Instagramprofil. Analysen utgår från (social) semiotiska förhållningsätt och fokuserar på hur olika former av kapital yttras. Resultatet visar främst på att Miquela (visuellt och tillsynes) innehar och nyttjar socialt kapital, samt genom att ”hon” uppträder ”vardagligt” enkelt går att relatera till, vilket kan bidra till de parasociala relationer ”hon” har till sina följare. / Miquela is a so-called “robot-influencer”, which means that “she” is a fictional character within a transmedial narrative maintained by the company Brud. Due to Miquela being constructed by computer-generated imagery and animations, it is easy to perceive her appearance as unrealistic, which may cause the uncannyvalley-effect for the viewer. This paper has its foundation in an interest of wanting to understand how something so apparently unrealistic can become social accepted as an actual (virtual) influencer. The purpose is thereby to explore a deeper understanding of how Miquela gets expressed through visual content on Instagram. Hence a qualitative image- and textanalysis will be conducted on material from Miquelas Instagramprofile. The analysis will rely on an (social) semiotic perspective and its focal point will be on how various forms of capital is expressed. The results primarily show how Miquela, visually and seemingly, owns and uses social capital, and that “she” exhibits a relatable “everyday” behavior, which can contribute to the parasocial relationships "she" has with her followers.

Based on the semiotic analysis, this diploma thesis analyses mythological frameworks of chosen magazines. It consists of two parts, a theoretical and a practical one. The theoretical part is focused on semiotics as science, examines a sign and its historical development, describes myth, its history and research, as well as defines a theoretical starting points leading to definition of mythological framework. This definition is built on the theory of decoding and encoding of Stuart Hall, as well as his representation acknowledgements, as well as on the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes examining the myth. The practical part consists of definition of research-subject and semiotic analysis of mythological frameworks in front pages of Reflex and Respekt magazines. Findings of this analysis are then compared. This comparison leads to confirmation or disproval of hypotheses the author articulated prior to the analysis.

I uppsatsen kommenteras en egen översättning av utdrag ur Roland Barthes fackartikel Éléments de sémiologie. Denna avser följa Immanuel Wallersteins regler för termöversättning av human- och socialvetenskapliga texter samt riktlinjer framtagna av the Social Science Translation Project (2006). Källtexten präglas av explicita referenser till andra texter. Två uttryck för detta som här tas upp är citat och explicit intertextuella termer (i synnerhet det senare). Den första frågeställningen är om ett mottagande intertextuelt fält kan användas för att översätta dessa. Det visar sig vara ett väsentligt redskap, men inte självtillräckligt eller entydigt. Den andra är hur de med hjälp av detta redskap valda målspråkstermerna förhåller sig till Nuopponens och Pilkes (2016) kriterier för ”goda termer”. Analys av de målspråkstermer som valts, vilka är låneord, visar att olika klasser av låneord har tendens att hänga samman med vissa typer av terminologiska för- och nackdelar. / The thesis is a commentary of my own translation of an excerpt of Roland Barthes article Éléments de sémiologie. Its aim is to follow Immanuel Wallerstein’s rules for translation of terms in social sciences as well as the guidelines developed by the Social Science Translation Project (2006). The orignal text is characterized by explicit references to other texts. Two elements that will be presented in the thesis are quotes and explicitly intertextual terms (with a focus on the latter). The first question is if a receiving intertextual field could be used to translate these elements. It turns out to be a fundamental tool, but not self-sufficient or unequivocal. The second question is how the chosen terms of the target language, with help from said tool, relate to Nuopponens and Pilkes (2016) criteria for ideal terms. An analysis of the chosen terms of the target language, which are borrowings, shows that different groups of borrowings tend to be associated to certain types of terminological pros and cons.

This thesis examines the forms and functions of self-consciousness in contemporary Gothic fiction. Though self-consciousness is an often-mentioned characteristic of Gothic writing, it has yet to be explored in sufficient depth. In particular, critics have failed to recognise the manner in which the myriad forms of textual and generic self-reflexivity at work contribute to the fiction’s fearful agenda: how self-consciousness in the Gothic is itself Gothicised. This thesis argues that, rather than being an ancillary quirk of generic coherence or an indication of creative exhaustion, self-consciousness has become an integral part of the genre’s terroristic project, a new source and representational mode of terror. In the wake of postmodern and post-structural theory, the genre’s longstanding interest in reading, writing and textuality has been renewed, re-contextualised and redeployed as a key feature of the Gothic ‘effect’. My original contribution to knowledge is a charting of the intersections between the Gothic and this critical perspective on the text. In particular I explore how the Barthesian reorientation of the text is redeployed in Gothic fiction as a source of terror. Rather than pursuing an author-centric division of chapters I have organised the thesis around types of self-conscious commentary that occur throughout the contemporary Gothic. These are: a focus on the process of writing and textual composition; the internalisation and Gothicised representation of critical theory; an acute awareness and meta-commentary on the critical and commercial contexts of Gothic; and intertextuality. Key texts include Stephen King’s Misery (1987), Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted (2005), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), R. M. Berry’s Frank (2005) and Peter Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008). This selection of texts is representative of a varied but coherent inward turn in the Gothic fiction of recent decades. It is, however, by no means exhaustive and supplementary evidence will be provided from additional texts. Equally, it is important to contextualise this contemporary turn in relation to an established vein of self-consciousness in the Gothic, present since its inception. As such, my approach is firstly to trace a lineage of reflexivity and to draw upon that tradition in demonstrating how contemporary Gothic writers have honed this technique to a uniquely terrifying purpose.

<p>In this paper Mona Hatoums installation Corps étranger is discussed via a post structuralized method based on associative and semiotic comparisons with vanitas, a post-modern self-portrait, and as a representative for modern visual art. The analyze touches upon pornography, science fiction and the quest for scientific conquest in outer and inner space. Theoretical references are Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Dolar, Said and Virilio. Hatoum makes the observer a voyageur with the aid of the latest medical technology, endoscope, which gives her the opportunity to make an introvert self-portrait when she films her own throat and rectum. But at the same time she makes the portrait of us all. I interpret this as a fictious science with postcolonial ideas, and the reference to science fiction is close at range. Hatoum takes the role as the other, the woman or the stranger and might flirt with Jülich interpretation of Corps étranger as a sign of the visual cultures colonisation of the human body’s inside, that is a conscious reference to sexuality, ethics and the search for knowledge and power.</p>

This thesis deals with the poster of the Nazi Third Reich and the ideology shaped by the images and text communication, which it presents. The work looks at the poster as an important medium of communication that served Nazi propaganda to spread National Socialist ideology. This thesis aims to analyse these myths and debunk them in the way how Roland Barthes defines them in his book Mythologies. The author of the diploma thesis applies the traditional method of qualitative research of the media content - mythological and semiotic analysis - to demystify the myths and semiotic characters used in the selected Nazi posters. The first part of the thesis contains terminology, the second part presents the analysis of the individual posters, which are divided into several groups. In the conclusion of the thesis, the author presents a list of common symbols and myths, which are the result of the analysis.

viii Abstract This thesis uses James Agee's 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to examine the role of so-called fictocriticism in emphasizing the immutability of an author from within a text. The thesis argues that the fictocritical text accounts for the impossibility of extricating the author from writing. Although its precursors date back several centuries- perhaps most notably to Michel de Montaigne-the term fictocriticism was coined in the mid- to late twentieth century to describe texts existing at the interstices of ostensibly fictional and factual genres of writing. Agee's text, borne out of a journalistic assignment for Fortune magazine, blends elements of long-form magazine journalism with lyric poetry with the author's famous sprawling, diaryesque prose, calling the reader to question which elements of the text are rooted in fact and which are simply the author's fabrications or, indeed, whether such a distinction can be drawn. The term can be applied only anachronistically to the 1941 book, yet as defined in these pages it is a befitting description of Agee's otherwise unclassifiable text. Fictocriticism lacks a singular definition, so the examination of Agee's Famous Men as a fictocritical work rests on a thorough revision of the term's history and its lexical implications, both of which...

This diploma work examines a product from the field of print media - front pages of magazine Reflex. Method of mythological analysis is used, which has been in qualitative research of media content applied for half of a century and is considered to be one of the traditional methods used by media studies. Unlike other dissertations in this thematic area this work does not only analyze visual or lexical contents of cover pages, but also focuses on participation of those contents in the development of myth. The work begins with introduction of key theoretical background and resulting terms used in following analyzes describing effects of myths in individual covers. Then the summary brings the interpretation and explanation of described phenomena. The work focuses to decipher myths contained in the first message which the Reflex magazine week after week addresses to his readers -the title page of individual issues. It analyses how the magazine constructs a system of myths, by which ideology can impact on its readers. Aim of this dissertation is not only to describe the process by which the myths capture a variety of signs and fill them with their own meanings, but also a dialectical relationship between myths and stereotypes or ideologies which stand in their background.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the writing of Annie Ernaux in two early texts LaPlace and La Honte. We will explain the notion of “écriture plate” (neutral writing) firstdefined by Roland Barthes and we will examine Ernaux’s narrative approach regarding thisconcept. We will also review the place and the use of the sociological in the two novels,focusing on the intertextuality between Ernaux’s and Bourdieu’s work. Our theoreticalbackground will be based on Barthes’ literary critic in Writing Degree Zero and onBourdieu’s general studies about class distinction and reproduction of social structures.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ivan Goncalves Feitosa Filho.pdf: 9950803 bytes, checksum: 81e1b8565c7957d25f3df59f964001c3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-10 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research situates its object of study, the « photographic message », in the context of the journalism in the political campaign to the cityhall of São Paulo in 2012 and has as main target the analysis of the tensions between denotation and connotation. It works with the barthesian hypothesis in agreement in which the media messages develop connoted systems, of double signification, one of which the connoted message offers the necessary categories for the analysis of the image and of the text, and its ramifications in the printed media that influence notably the choice of the reader/voter, being this last question that justifies the proposal of the dissertation. The main contribution of the work consists of the application of the categories of the « photographic message » to the publications of printed media of two media vehicles of the context of a political campaign. Metodologicaly, the reaearch is bibliographical, analytical and documentary, of qualitative character, showing like such messages exceed, for the connotation, the limits of the denotative information. The corpus of the research includes the publications of two newspapers of major circulation in the country: O Estado de Sao Paulo and A Folha de Sao Paulo, in their inseparably photographic and textual registers of the above-mentioned campaigns. The theoretical fundamentation for the field of the photography understands the barthesian theory especially that proposal in Mythologies - exegesis of specific works of the author: The Obvious and the Obtuse, Camera Lucida, «The Photographic Message» and Semiologic Adventure. For the field of the journalism, the images are explored introducing significant elements of increase in value as to the journalistic treatment of such a political campaign, essentially centered in showing the defining characteristics of the global image of the candidates and of the competing parties, the communicative intention of both newspapers in his ideological positioning which goes and meets the criticism in Mythologies / Esta pesquisa situa seu objeto de estudo, a «mensagem fotográfica», no âmbito do jornalismo na campanha política à Prefeitura de São Paulo em 2012 e tem por objetivo a análise das tensões entre a denotação e a conotação. Trabalha com a hipótese barthesiana segundo com a qual as mensagens midiáticas desenvolvem sistemas conotados, de dupla significação, uma das quais a mensagem conotada oferece as categorias necessárias para a análise da imagem e do texto, e seus desdobramentos na mídia impressa que influenciam notavelmente a escolha do leitor/eleitor, sendo esta última questão a que justifica a proposta da dissertação. A principal contribuição do trabalho consiste na aplicação das categorias da «mensagem fotográfica» às publicações de mídia impressa de dois veículos midiáticos no contexto de uma campanha política. Metodologicamente, a pesquisa é bibliográfica, analítica e documental, de caráter qualitativo, mostrando como tais mensagens ultrapassam, pela conotação, os limites da informação denotativa. O corpus da pesquisa abrange as publicações dos dois jornais de maior circulação no país: O Estado de São Paulo e a Folha de São Paulo, em seus registros inseparavelmente fotográficos e textuais das referidas campanhas. A fundamentação teórica para o campo da fotografia compreende a teoria barthesiana notadamente aquela proposta em Mitologias - exegeses de obras específicas do autor, como O Óbvio e o Obtuso, Câmera clara, «A Mensagem fogtográfica» e Aventura semiológica. Para o campo do jornalismo, exploramse as imagens introduzindo elementos de valorização significativos a respeito do tratamento jornalístico de tal campanha eleitoral, essencialmente centrado em mostrar as características definidoras da imagem global dos candidatos e dos partidos concorrentes, a intenção comunicativa de ambos os jornais no seu posicionamento ideológico que vai ao encontro da crítica em Mitologias