In this study, I look at the content and interpretation of posts by a feminist meme account on Instagram called @thegirlslikeme, from the perspective of a sample size of Nigerian female followers through a focus group discussion, along with a visual social semiotic analysis of the posts. This study set out to answer three research questions:  i) How do the posts on TGLM use humor and wellness to portray feminism?  ii) How is the content on TGLM challenging antifeminist narratives in a Nigerian context? And finally,  iii) How do the Nigerian followers relate to the brand of feminism represented on TGLM? The theoretical approaches theories employed to help think through the data gathered in form of thematic blocks from the interview, and the textual and visual content are participatory culture, work of representation, and filter bubbles and echo chambers. The findings of this research show that there are comparable trends in the language and terms being used in conversations being held by Nigerian feminists, and within an online community of feminists, in particular @thegirlslikeme. While fashion, rest, luxury, wellness, and self-empowerment self have abundant in the representations in the content published by @thegirlslikeme, the seven feminists engaged in a focus group discussion echoed concerns of equity versus equality, religion, culture, career ambition, and domesticity. Although there is a switch in perspective and language being used to address sexism and societal oppression of women, the representation of a diverse range of women on @thegirlslikeme is a push to include a wider vocabulary in the language of feminism for all women.

Abstract:Social Media has become a powerful tool in several aspects. It can mobilize movements, rallying for social or political causes, and it can bring people together to share experiences or interest on a global platform. Social media platforms have facilitated more dynamic ways of presenting and performing identity positions such as race, gender, class and sexuality. Though many scholars have agreed that the internet and social media offer interesting new aspects in relation to identity exploration and self-expression, the performance of identity online can also contribute to problematic discourses that reinforce old social stereotypes online affecting what happens offline.This thesis explores racial performance on social media by examining the phenomenon of ‘Digital Blackface’, which is a virtual continuation of a historical phenomenon that operates, in particular, through Internet memes. The thesis studies different versions of an American meme, which represent an altered representation of a real person, known as Sweet Brown. Sweet Brown is an African American woman who after she was interviewed on television became a viral celebrity. Due to her expressive personality, her image has been remixed into several popular Internet memes.The theoretical framework consists of a theorization of racial performance and media representation theory. This theoretical lens is used in the analysis that sets out to answer the questions, how is the Sweet Brown meme used as a form of racial performance online? What is Digital Blackface and how does it operate online? And In what way can racial performance reinforce stereotypic representations? The methodological approach the thesis employs to conduct the analysis and exemplify the problematics are visual analysis, critical discourse analysis, and critical theory. Further, the implication of racial performances in Internet memes is linked to other recent cases or incidents that relate to issues of racial performance in the media. Keywords: Racial Performance, Internet memes, Minstrelsy, Digital Blackface, Internet Culture, Representation, Race, Racism.

This thesis aims to understand the everyday use of digital media by Chinese ordinary citizens as new forms of civic engagement under strict online censorship and CCP’s authoritarian control. With the announcement of the Third-child Policy as the analytical background, I adopted a qualitative research method and conducted digitally mediated ethnography on Sina Weibo users. Specifically, I took a close look at their strategic usage of social media practices, memes, as means to participate in the discussion of third-child policy on the platform. My theoretical framework builds off on James Scott’s (1989) theory of everyday forms of resistance and Flinders & Wood’s (2018) notions on everyday political participation, supplementing with concepts of connective action and collective identity. This paper shows how participants used low-key, tactical, and mundane memes to criticize third-child policy, the motivations, and intentions behind their acts, how meme expressions are organized, sustained, and what makes these acts politically effective. By doing this, I highlight how participants’ everyday self- determined online practices result in the formation of collective identities that eventually lead to the emergence of underground centrality among ordinary Chinese people and challenge CCP authority and legitimacy. As such, it will contribute to a deeper insight into the collective nature of and resistance power of participants' individual online actions and enrich our understanding of the active agency of Chinese actors and their civic engagement under censorship regimes.

In marginalized communities, humour has been used to manage stigma in internet spaces which facilitate the gathering of individuals with stigmatizing commonalities. This thesis endeavours to show the methods that emerge from internet communities, specifically through the platform Discord, that are used to redefine how information about mental illness is conveyed and how it entails personal interaction. Focused on the way depression memes are interpreted by users of the Discord, and how the need for humour is used as a tool to distance oneself from interpersonal relationships, I have examined how the fear of being labelled mentally ill still manifests itself within a space originally intended for transgressive content. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Discord's 2meirl4meirl server, and consisting of participant observation as well as informal interviews, I argue that users, by attempting to shed from themselves their marginalized status by interacting in Discord, introduce new, but faulty, methods of stigma management.

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This thesis examines how the Swedish telecom company Comviq utilizes the meme formatknown as Trumpet Boy in their commercial Orkestern from 2018. The study makes use of aqualitative comparative semiotic analysis to decode signs present in both the referencematerial and the video advertisment. This study relies on the theoretical basis of Stuart Hall’stheory of representation, Linda Hutcheon and Siobhan O’Flynn’s theory on adaption andHenry Jenkins’ theory on transmedia storytelling.The study finds that Orkestern makes use of the fundamental concepts and imagery found inboth the original still image and a remix of the Trumpet Boy meme format. AlthoughOrkestern can be seen as an adaptation or paraphrase of the aforementioned meme, it alsotakes liberties with the implementation of said concepts. The core elements attributed to thememe can be found in Orkestern but while a reference is being made, it’s not being copied, inmuch the same way as memes are paraphrased by users of social media platforms.

Återkommande aspekter relaterade till diagnosen adhd visualiseras i memes som används för intern kommunikation i en sluten grupp på Facebook. Dessa memes är grunden för en socialsemiotisk analys som utifrån Halls beskrivning av representation, ska undersöka mottagargruppen med ett fenomenologiskt perspektiv på upplevelsen av vad de olika aspekterna innebär. Reflektioner kring hur memes som medie kan fungera som ett verktyg för information i relation till hyperverklighet, hur de kan exkludera genom stereotyper eller bidra till känsla av grupptillhörighet, hur de kan verka identitetsbyggande och underlätta för acceptans av diagnos är uppsatsens utgångspunkt. Uppsatsen undersöker hur ett urval av memes visualiserar aspekter av att som kvinna leva med diagnos adhd, samt vilka budskap bild och text genom samverkan i dessa memes formulerar.  Analysen upptäcker hur samspelet mellan text och bild fungerar som en gränsdragning mellan vad mottagargruppen upplever på insidan och vad som kan observeras utifrån. Detta samspel visar även att avsändare och mottagargrupp delar konceptuella kartor och en förståelse för vad upplevelsen av att leva med adhd som kvinna innebär. Aspekter av att leva med adhd som kvinna visualiseras genom semiotiska tecken som i materialet motsäger stereotypen adhd. Memesens budskap blir en bekräftelse på grupptillhörighet och upplevelser relaterade till problem diagnosen kan innebära. Genom att motsäga den stereotypa bilden av adhd och i stället visa förståelse för gruppens upplevda verklighet definierar memesen en skiljelinje mellan diagnos och person och kan underlätta för acceptans och förståelse för den egna diagnosen.

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.

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Studien “Harmlös - eller inte?”  undersöker memes skapade av den högerextrema organisationen Nordiska motståndsrörelsen (NMR) för att se hur de framställer etablissemanget i  kopplat till covid-19. Studien undersöker även hur dessa memes är konstruerade. Memes är ett framgångsrikt digitalt verktyg som används på internet. Deras största kännetecken är ironi och humor. På senare tid har memes även börjat användas som opinionsverktyg då de levererar budskap snabbt och effektivt. Högerextrema organisationer i synnerhet använder memes särskilt flitigt för att nå ut och locka nya följare. Teorier som använts för att uppnå studiens syfte är representationsteorin, ideologier samt teorin om intertextualitet. Analysen har genomförts på 13 memes i bild- och textform genom en kritisk diskursanalys baserad på en anpassad version av Carvalhos (2008) modell för diskursanalys. Analysstegen som används är layout & struktur, objekt & aktörer, språk, grammatik och retorik samt ideologiska ståndpunkter. Resultatet visar att Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen i sina memes anpassar nyheter som rör coronapandemin till att passa sin fiendebild. NMR framställer etablissemanget som något främmande och opålitligt i samband med Covid-19. NMR använder humor, ironi och satir för att kritisera makthavarna. Dessutom finns starka kopplingar till högerextrema idéer, bland annat antisemitism, homofobi samt våld- och dödshot. / The study "Harmless - or not?" examines memes created by Swedish far-right organization The Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) to see how they portray the establishment in connection with covid-19. The study also examines how these memes are constructed. Memes are a successful digital tool used on the internet. Their biggest characteristics are irony and humor. Recently, memes have also started to see use as tools of opinion-making, as users can derive meaning from them quickly and efficiently. Right-wing extremist organizations in particular use memes particularly extensively to reach out and attract new followers. Theories used to achieve the purpose of the study are ideology, the theory of representation and the theory of intertextuality. The analysis has been carried out on 13 memes in image and text form through a critical discourse analysis based on an adapted version of Carvalho's (2008) model for  discourse analysis. The analysis steps used are layout & structure, objects & actors, language, grammar and rhetoric as well as ideological positions. The result shows that the Nordic Resistance Movement in its memes adapts news related to the corona pandemic to fit its image of the enemy. NMR portrays the establishment as something alien and hostile in connection with Covid-19. NMR uses humor, irony and satire to criticize those in power. In addition, there are strong links to right-wing extremist ideas, including anti-Semitism, homophobia and threats of violence and death.