Research in the field of gaming and the gaming culture shows that the culture is characterized by sexism and hypermasculinity, however a majority of this research is conducted in an Anglo-Saxon context. Therefore the aim of this study was to elucidate the Swedish gaming discourse in relation to gender, gendered norms and stereotypes. We also sought to examine the relationship between the editorial content and the blog comments. The study was based on a critical discourse analysis with a gender perspective, applied to five Swedish gaming blogs. By implementing power theory and encoding/decoding theory, we have concluded that there is a discursive struggle, where one part of the gaming culture is characterized by male dominance, while the other part of the discourse is showing signs of resistance to this hypermasculinity. We found that there is a gap between how gender is portrayed among the blog comments in relationship to the editorial content.

Cette recherche traite du jeu de rôle sur table comme moyen oral et collectif de création fictionnelle et littéraire. Elle montre que les JdR mettent en place des dispositifs ludiques qui obligent les joueurs à co-générer un contenu fictionnel diégétique et narratif, selon le principe qui est nommé l’intercréativité. L’intercréativité propre aux JdR fusionne les actes de création et de réception de la fiction et met en crise le rapport de la littérature à l’écrit. Dans un premier temps, nous étudions la manière dont s’est élaboré le concept d’intercréativité tout au long de l’histoire des JdR. Ensuite, nous les intégrons à un ensemble dont ils sont un élément fondateur, la culture geek. Nous montrons que le JdR est un héritier des littératures de l’imaginaire et qu’il fait la jonction entre ces deux sphères. Les JdR y sont également envisagés comme des mondes fictionnels intercréés, précurseurs d’une part des univers partagés et des jeux vidéo RPG, et d’autre part de la systématisation des mondes fictionnels qui induisent une réception interactive. Dans notre troisième partie, nous expliquons en quoi l’intercréativité fictionnelle mise en place par le JdR est un processus narratif et littéraire, une expérience collective et immédiate de la création de la fiction par le langage oral. Nous nous penchons sur les spécificités narratives de ce médium. Nous montrons également comment ces outils de création fictionnelle dépassent, pour certains écrivains, le cadre des JdR pour déboucher sur une création littéraire classique. Enfin, nous abordons le ludique comme un ensemble de dispositifs qui obligent les joueuses à créer un contenu fictionnel ensemble, ce que nous nommons l’intercréativité. Le JdR accomplit une disruption et une systématisation du matériau fictionnel, dont la réorganisation narrative est la création des joueurs. Avec l’intercréativité, c’est un rapport dionysiaque à la littérature qui ressurgit, alors qu’il avait été annihilé par l’industrialisation. / This work deals with pen & paper role-playing games as an oral and collective way to create fiction. It shows RPGs set up game procedures to oblige players to co-create narrative and diegetic contents, according to what we call intercreativity. Intercreativity,which is specific to RPGs, blends fictional creation and reader-response together. It reconsiders the definition of literature as a written text. First, we study how intercreativity has been built during the RPGs’ history. Then we show RPG is a link between fantasy literature and geek culture. RPGs are considered as co-created worlds, pioneers of shared worlds, RPG video games and systematization of imaginary worlds, which sets the base of interactivity. Finally, we explain that intercreativity is a narrative process, a collective and immediate experience of creating fiction with oral language. We show how these tools for creation inspire writers to produce classic literary works. We broach these games as tools to create fiction. RPGs smash and systematize fiction, and the narrative reorganization is the players’ creation. Intercreativity makes reappear a Dionysian way to consider literature, which has been annihilated during the Industrialization.

In this study I use critical discourse analysis on two different social platforms, Reddit and Battlefields own social platform, where I look for discourses around gamers and masculinity. I use the R.W Connells theories around hegemonic masculinity and E.K Sedgwicks theories around Homosociality to read my material. What I found was that even though a lot of research has found that it is quite balanced between the sexes who uses digital games, the social picture is still that it is something that men use and take part of, and part of why people still look at gamers as men is because a lot of women don’t feel welcomed in the community.

The aim of this paper is to examine the National Library of Sweden's ability to preserve the gaming culture. It will also look at what the subjects gaming culture and cultural heritage means. The source materials of the essay are mainly previous research of cultural heritage and gaming culture, plus some texts fom the National Library of Sweden and other offical laws and text, which makes this essay mainly a litterature study with some description theory. Through my studies of these earlier texts, the questions that emerged for me are the following: - How is culture heritage defined according to the academic world and the cultural world? - How can gaming culture be defined as a concept and a cultural heritage? - What does the preservation of the gaming culture look like at the National Library of Sweden?  The results show that cultural heritage is a difficult to specify subject, much like culture itself. In the end no two persons specify it the same, but I myself fell for the Swedish National Heritage Board's definition: all material and immaterial expressions of humans. Gaming culture is also quite difficult to specify, since many people see it as different things. Something all seems to agree on is that includes all kinds of expressions from humans. Hence, it should be obvious that it is a part of the cultural heritage. The Nation Library of Sweden includes several departements. For the one I interviewed it is not quite possible for them to preserve the gaming culture because of various laws. They want to, but cannot. Other departments might be able to collect those parts instead. So they might be able to preserve a complete picture of the gaming culture. So, I propose that citizens step in and take over the responsibility for preserving the parts of the gaming culture that parts of the National Library simply cannot access at the moment. Maybe the citizens can collaborate with local archives, or even the National Library of Sweden, and the gaming culture will still find a place in the archives in the end.

This essay examines how three big Swedish newspapers depicts e-sports and computer gaming and how the depiction change during 2000-2013. The study will also examine whether e-sports is being portrayed as competitive sport. The purpose is to investigate which attitudes that can be identified towards computer gaming and its culture in major newspapers such as Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet and how these attitudes eventually changed over time.   The sources that will be used in both the quantitative and qualitative analysis are based on web articles, mainly because the paper editions does not provide much, if any, information about computer gaming and e-sports and also because of the convenience of being able to quickly find articles to study.   Results indicate that computer gaming is being depicted in a clear negative fashion during 2000-2006, and that the depiction of e-sports is somewhat positive but not as glorifying as for the years 2007-2013. During this period, there is a apparent tendency of e-sports being introduced to readers who are unfamiliar with the gaming culture. As for the attitudes towards computer gaming, the depiction is still somewhat negative, mainly because the debate about computer games and violence was revived because of several acts of violence in shape of school massacres and mass murder. Finally, there are only partial results that indicate that e-sports is being portrayed as a competitive sport, based on Allen Guttman's criteria for competitive sports.

I denna studie undersöks den kraftiga kritik som riktats mot de TV- och dataspel som omfamnar olika typer av vad jag kallar progressiva element. Det rör sig framförallt om sådant som mångfald, representation eller hur spelen i sitt utförande bryter mot hur de traditionellt sett har utformats. Studien är en diskursanalys av YouTube-videos, där utgångspunkten har varit hur argumenten konstruerar en viss problemformulering kring dessa progressiva element, med specifika orsaker och lösningar. Genom att dekonstruera dessa uttalanden och sedan rekonstruera en ekvivalenskedja, dvs. relationen mellan olika subjektspositioner och tecken, menar jag att detta visar på hur diskursen bärs upp av en binär logik där ett ”vi”, Spelarna, ställs mot ett ”dom”, Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). Denna logik konstrueras genom binära diskursiva uteslutningar vilket gör grupperna till varandras motsatser. I diskursen avpolitiseras rollen som Spelare genom att den knyts samman med begrepp som rationalitet, spelkulturen och den fria marknaden, medan SJWs förknippas med censur, ideologi och icke-spel. På detta sätt osynliggörs således en subjektsposition starkt förknippad med maskulinitet och en ofta pseudo-meritokratiskt och socialdarwinistisk ideologi, som hävdar tolkningsföreträde och motsätter sig alla typer av förändring, på grundval av sanning och fakta. / This study examines the sharp criticism directed at video games that embrace different types of what I call progressive elements, primarily those that include diversity, representation, or deviate from traditional video gaming mechanics and norms. The study is a discourse analysis of YouTube videos, where the starting point has been how the arguments construct a problem in relation to these progressive elements, with specific causes and solutions. By deconstructing these statements and then reconstructing a chain of equivalence, i.e. relations between subject positions, this shows how a binary logic carries the discourse where a specific ‘we’, The Gamer, are up against a specific ‘them’, the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). By ways of binary discursive exclusions, the groups are constructed as opposites. In the discourse, The Gamer becomes depoliticized by relating it to concepts of rationality, game culture and the free market, whilst SJWs are associated with censorship, ideology, and non-games. In this way, The Gamer makes invisible its association with masculinity and an often pseudo-meritocratic and Social Darwinist ideology, and claims an interpretative prerogative and oppose any kind of change, on basis of truth and facts.

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An ordinary gamer - a qualitative analysis of the treatment of women in CS:GO is an essay with the aim to examine the treatment of women who play CS:GO, and the influence of the response and to highlight the player interaction and communication in the game and its influence on the individual. With questions concerning treatment, the consequences of treatment and future interest in gaming and the gaming industry, the paper examines how a selection of women look at the treatment they receive in CS:GO. The essay also focuses on player interaction and communication in the game, and examines the importance of communication in the game, and the impact on the individual. To analyze the result, gender theories regarding femininity, masculinity, queer, gender hierarchy and patriarchal structures was used. The study was conducted with 10 qualitative interviews of girls aged 14-24 years who play or have played CS:GO. The study also uses a more ethnographic method where I play the game to observe the communication, treatment and response at close range. The result show a broad picture of the response to that woman gets, and contains stories about the good, bad and neutral approach. The results also show that the treatment is something very subjective and different for all individuals. Furthermore, the results also shows patriarchal structures within the game and how men use power and violence in order to organize women. Regarding communication and play interaction, is it through interviews and observations clear that communication plays an important role in the game and affect the individual to either play better or worse depending on what type of response and treatment the player gets. Conclusions are that women that play CS:GO are treated in different ways, some take it more personally than other and some are affected bigger than other. Some women choose not to play the game or only play with friends while other choose to play with an anonymous profile and to distort their voice.

Participatory culture inside a filter bubble – A content analysis of the network society Twitch.tv’s external communication. The aim of this essay was to study how user-generated content is being used and how it is presented by Twitch Interactive, Inc. in its external communication, more specifically how the discourse of this content is shaped on Twitter. To gather the information needed a quantity based content analysis was made, ranging from 1-31st of October 2015. From this data patterns where detected and a discourse analysis based on Berglez version of van Dijks model was conducted on six of the Twitter posts that followed said pattern. This was done to answer how the discourse was shaped and what the consequences could be of using such a pattern. Analyzing the results was done using theory from strategic marketing researchers such as Larsåke Larsson, Lars Palm, Ulf Dahlqvist and Magnus Linde. Furthermore theorist like Gripsrud, Pariser, Lindgren, Jenkins, Ford and Green were used to describe and analyze the field of culture, more specifically participatory and popular culture. The conclusion of the study was that Twitch representation of user-generated material and the culture it represents was unjustified and could be seen as a filter bubble. The results showed that the majority of content was young white male gamers where as other research on the field of gaming culture shows a more equal split between genders. The individuals that where represented in the content could be seen as objects of admiration and association. Discussion led to the belief that Twitch may not possess the power to change to discourse due to the strong economic need of the consumers. This need was concluded to arise from the fact that the platform and its culture is much like participatory culture and where this culture has been taken to a commercial level.