I det rådande informationssamhället där utbytet av information och digitalt material har blivit mer framträdande än någonsin tidigare har även upphovsrättsfallen kring dess användande och återanvändande blivit allt mer aktualiserade. I denna uppsats har vi sökt att studera hur normer kring skapande och originalitet har påverkat kreativa aktörers syn på återanvändning och rekontextualisering under det senare 00-talet och tidiga 2010-talet. Genom att utveckla metoden interkontextualitet har vi studerat hur människan och hennes kognitiva processer influerar rättsfall som rör just deriverade verk och/eller rekontextualisering. Den digitala tekniken har fört med sig nya normer kring skapande tillika hur information förmedlas mellan människor, vilket resulterat i förändrade konsumtionsmönster och en remixkultur där individuella verk inte ses som statiska enheter utan som levande, sammanlänkade uttryck. Kognitiva processer kan ha bidragit till denna remixkultur och i sin tur mer generaliserade attityder från mediadistributionsbolag och myndighetsorganisationer. Med bakgrund av detta söker vi att förespråka en mer öppen syn på de interkontextuella samband som binder kreativa verk och deras bakomliggande kreatörer till varandra. Att se kreativa uttryck som en del i den globala meme-pool,där människor tillsammans bygger vidare på vårt kulturella arv, kan vara ett steg i att motverka skadlig egoism kring det egna skapandet. / In the current information society where the exchange of information and digital material has grown to become more prominent than ever before, so has the copyright cases regarding the usage and reusage of said materials become increasingly actualized. In this thesis, we’ve sought to study how norms surrounding creation and originality has affected the views on reuse and recontextualization of creative actors during the latter parts of the 2000’s as well as the early 2010’s. By developing the method intercontextuality, we’ve been studying how mankind and her cognitive processes influence court cases concerning derivative works and/or recontextualization. The digital technology has brought forth new norms surrounding creation as well as how information is mediated between people, which has resulted in changed consumption patterns and a remix culture where individual works are no longer viewed as static entities, but as living, interconnected expressions. Cognitive processes may have contributed to this remix culture and in turn more generalising attitudes from media distribution companies and government organizations. We proceed to advocate a more open view on the intercontextual connections that bind all creative works and their underlying creators together. To view creative expressions as a part of the global meme-pool, where together people keep building on our cultural heritage may just be a step towards preventing harmful egoism surrounding one’s own creations.

Communication is part of our everyday life. We speak, we write, we move our bodies and faces in ways to express a feeling or deliver a message. Technology has made it more convenient to communicate with the people in our network, thus has made it harder for us to show the non-verbal signals that we express in our physical interactions. The development of new technology has proved that there is an interest in communicating more transparently and clearly. This study aims to discover patterns and loopholes in the rise of the GIF phenomena via Facebook Messenger. A picture format that has emerged from remix and popular culture which allows users to easily send, receive, upload and experience the short animations. There are different GIF genres but this study focuses on reactive and highlight GIFs since their intention is to deliver an emotional response with the help of non-verbal signals that it contains. There is a saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words” but can a thousand words really be described by an image sequence? In this research, a qualitative analysis has been made for a deeper understanding of the use of GIF and its context in our social interactions online. By interviewing different types of GIF users, we will get a valuable insight on the patterns that have been identified for the purpose of this study. Which can be of great interest for future research concerning responsive and emotion-based communication on social media.

Drawing upon the opportunity that the Internet and social media provides anyone with internet access to create, consume, publish and produce digital content, this study aims to examine one of the new means of communication. In today’s digital society creating content and communicating across boarders is easier than ever, but actually getting the point across is not – with an evergrowing number of posts, users and sites there is a struggle close the gap between posting a message and actually having it noticed. This study examines memes – normally seen as easily understood jokes – as means of accessible and simplistic communication by qualitatively examining fifteen feminist memes on Twitter. The study aims to see what the memes are conveying in means of social criticism and feminist orientations, their relation to the online feminist discourses and, lastly, explore the memes’ potential role in the political sphere. The theoretical framework firstly explains memes in relation to Henry Jenkins’ participatory culture, Lawrence Lessig’s remix culture and relates memes to the political sphere based on both Limor Shifman’s meme theory and the two theories mentioned above. Secondly, first-, second- and third-wave feminism is introduced along with radical feminism and the feminist concept of sisterhood. Lastly, the social constructivism sets the groundwork for the study’s choice of method; critical discourse analysis. The critical discourse analysis is used in a modified version along with the ‘verbal-visual unity’; a method designed to take the memes structure – the combination of text and images – into account. These methods are used to identify themes, connotations, modality, interdiscursivity, social criticism and the feminist orientation of the memes. The result reveals that there are four main points of social criticism emphasized in the memes; regarding body norms, regarding belittling of women’s opinions and actions, regarding patriarchal structures and regarding men in general. The main feminist orientation visible in more than half the memes is radical feminism, while second-wave feminism is visible in a third. Meanwhile, the memes’ relation to the feminist discourses varies; smaller discourses have low levels of interdiscoursivity, while the main discourse for online feminism show high levels. The study shows that memes’ – potential – roles in the political sphere are as means of spreading opinion, as ways of constituting new norms in a new reality, and as means of shifting the structures of power in society.

I mitten av 1990-talet närmare bestämt 1996 gjordes en film kallad Diary of a Camper. Filmen handlade om en person som satt och lurpassade på sina fiender i ett datorspel. Det som var speciellt med denna film var inte handlingen eller något fantastiskt kameraarbete. Nej det som var speciellt var det faktum att filmen spelades in i ett datorspel. Denna film anses vara startskottet för machinimakulturen som idag omfattar flera tusen utövare världen över.Det var personerna bakom Diary of a camper som myntade uttrycket machinima som är en sammanslagning av de engelska orden ”machine” och ”animation” alltså maskin och animation. Det finns en annan tolkning där ordets andra stavelse är ”cinema” istället för ”animation” men den officiella ska vara det tidigare. Vad än ordet machinima är ihopsatt av är det en filmteknik där kreatören eller producenten spelar in sin historia i ett TV- eller datorspel. I denna uppsats tittar vi närmare på machinimakulturen och vad för regler, attityder och förhållningssätt som finns i denna tilldags dato, anno 2010, något outforskade arena.