Departing from a technofeminist perspective, Becoming Image, places the digital image in a broader context of modern and postmodern technological discourses and fashion. In four articles, the compilation dissertation expands a contemporary and imagistic tech discourse by questioning the ideology of ”masculinity”―specifically the idea of it as a historically male domain. Through interviews, discourse analysis and feminist critique, as well as an interdisciplinary focus on digital media, the project investigates how everyday image practices open up for new embodied experiences. Focusing on women and social media, the articles examines the way material and immaterial aspects of images overlap in everyday life. Rather than artistic intention, emotions and basic human interaction often lie at heart of becoming image. Fashion is, however, highly present in this critical transformation. Not only as collaborative projects emerge out of combining new technologies and dress―such as using your smartphone to elevate your clothing―but also how fashion is a technology itself. Fashion highlights the body as medium, but fashion is also always (mostly) image.  Previous research around the digital image and its meaning has often stressed the banality of everyday image practices as taking selfies. However, these debates represent deeper cultural values and norms, which the dissertation reaches beyond. As women, and also queer and trans-people increasingly innovate and interfere with normative technological usage, it becomes evident that such groups have been excluded from communities organized around technological power and skill. As with language, technology and digital imagery are not neutral media. Women have hence been excluded―and been forced to use instruments and apps seemingly made for strict masculine purposes. Arguably, image practices such as selfies or image micro-blogging encourage women to “write” themselves out of a world they have not constructed themselves. Thus, Becoming Image simultaneously illuminates the structural and fundamental levels of technology and gender―while also suggesting new methodological and theoretical ways of studying and approaching digital media. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Accepted.</p><p> </p>

abstract: Though the concept of 'transgender' has gained a foothold in American culture, the representation of transgender subjects is both limited and limiting. Media representations of trans experiences generally exclude or negatively depict both trans-masculine people and trans individuals of color. Subsequently, many trans-masculine individuals of color — especially black transmen — turn to online forums to create original content, express what being transgender means to them, and explore topics excluded from mainstream conversations. Utilizing participatory ethnography influenced by digital and visual approaches, “Tumblr Saved My Life”: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of how Black Trans- Masculinity Operates through Tumblr explores how black transmen articulate racialized trans-masculine experiences via posts, selfies, and hashtags on the social networking site Tumblr. Online observations revealed that Tumblr allows interlocutors an opportunity to ask questions, document physical changes, learn about the lived realities of transgender people of color, and connect with fellow black trans-masculine individuals. In addition to online observation, in-person interviews and observations explored the context for the content interlocutors create, as well as how online articulations of masculinity differ from everyday performances of gender.Tumblr interactions are important to participants; however, the platform is not where they discuss the more nuanced aspects of being black and transgender. In-person interviews illuminated how black transmen uniquely understand societal erasure as black women prior to starting hormone replacement therapy and experience hyper-visibility as black men after treatment. Specifically, interlocutors note the various forms of racism they experience, and how those forms change depending on whether their bodies are read as a feminine or masculine. For example, when read and socialized as black girls, participants noted being subjected to sexualization and predation. Conversely, when read and treated as masculine, they gain access to male-only spaces, but face exclusion and suspicion in other contexts. In short, this work articulates the complex relationship black transmen have to vectors of power, and how they utilize visual images, social media, and technology to present and construct their realities. Ultimately, understanding these experiences can expand the scope of trans studies and feminist theory. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Gender Studies 2020

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver uma leitura psicanalítica a respeito do fenômeno contemporâneo da automutilação. A questão que conduziu nossa pesquisa foi a busca pela compreensão acerca da função que os cortes e ferimentos autoinfligidos assumem no que diz respeito ao âmbito do funcionamento psíquico do sujeito. Nossa hipótese inicial era de que o recurso ao ato, na automutilação, consistiria em uma defesa contra a emergência do excesso pulsional traumático. As considerações teóricas de Freud a respeito das neuroses atuais indicaram a existência de um aspecto essencial relacionado ao excesso pulsional: a insuficiência da conexão psíquica, a qual estaria articulada, por sua vez, ao plano do narcisismo. Com isto, introduzimos a dimensão alteritária a fim de compreendermos o processo de constituição do Eu na obra freudiana e a importância da intersubjetividade na teoria do amadurecimento de D. W. Winnicott. Além disso, o fato de que a automutilação tem como objeto o próprio corpo - e, na maior parte dos casos, a pele - indicou a necessidade de uma discussão a respeito destes elementos a partir do referencial teórico da psicanálise. De modo geral, foi possível observar que o fenômeno da automutilação se articula à clínica das configurações narcísicas, marcadas por uma fragilidade decorrente de determinadas especificidades da relação entre o bebê e o objeto primário. Sendo a obra de André Green essencial para esta teorização, utilizamos suas contribuições a respeito do complexo da mãe morta e do trabalho do negativo. Concluímos, a partir destas considerações, que a automutilação assume uma função defensiva contra o sofrimento psíquico do sujeito e, em um sentido mais radical, contra a própria morte psíquica. Além disso, acreditamos que o recurso ao ato também possui, nestes casos, uma dimensão comunicativa, sendo a forma encontrada pelo sujeito para pedir ajuda a partir da convocação ao olhar do outro. Por fim, buscamos compreender qual seria a potência da psicanálise diante deste fenômeno, tendo em vista a importância do reconhecimento do sofrimento destes sujeitos. A fim de ilustrar os recortes teóricos efetuados, também foi proposta uma articulação com materiais extraídos da rede social Tumblr / The present work aims to develop a psychoanalytic reading about the contemporary phenomenon of self - mutilation. The question that led to our research was the pursuit to understand the function that cuts and self-inflicted injuries assume in relation with the psychic functioning of the subject. Our initial hypothesis was that the act of self-mutilation as a resource would consist in a defense against the instinctual excess. Freud\'s theoretical considerations regarding the actual neuroses have indicated the existence of an essential aspect related to the instinctual excess: the insufficiency of the psychic connection, which would be articulated to the level of narcissism. In face of that, we introduce the dimension of alterity in order to understand the process of constitution of the Ego in Freudian theory and the importance of the intersubjectivity in D. Winnicott\'s theory of maturation. In addition, the fact that self-mutilation has the body itself as its object - and, in most cases, the skin - has indicated the need for a discussion about these elements from the theoretical frame of psychoanalysis. Overall, it was possible to observe that the phenomenon of self-mutilation is articulated to the narcissistic constitutions clinical, arranged by a fragility concerning certain specificities of the relationship between the baby and the primary object. Since André Green\'s work is essential for this theorization, we use his contributions about the complex of the dead mother and the work of the negative. We have reached the conclusion that self-mutilation assumes a defensive function against the psychic suffering of the subject and, in a radical sense, against psychic death. Furthermore, we believe that the act as a resource also has a communicative dimension, especially in these cases, when it might be a form that was found by the subject to ask for help from the desire of being really seen. Finally, we try to understand the potencial of psychoanalysis face of this phenomenon, given the importance of recognizing the suffering of these subjects. In order to illustrate the theoretical considerations, we also proposed a link with materials from the online social network Tumblr

Sammanfattning I dagens trafik uppstår dagligen köer på grund av olika händelser i trafikflödet som olyckor, vilt eller andra faror. Köbildningen bildas ofta på grund av informationsbrist eller sen informationsspridning om händelserna. Det här arbetet utvecklar en enkel webbapplikation riktad till trafikanter som vill och kan rapportera in de dagliga händelserna som påverkar trafikflödet. Applikationen är snabb att ladda på mobila enheter och innehåller ett enkelt formulär för rapportering av händelser utifrån fyra huvudtyper. Informationen publiceras inte bara på webbapplikationen utan sprids även vidare till tre olika sociala nätverkstjänster och bloggar. Ett problem med webbapplikationen som inte hann lösas under arbetets gång är anpassningen till olika skärmstorlekar hos mobila enheter. Omskalningen fungerar olika bra beroende på skärmstorleken och webbläsaren hos den mobila enheten som används. En vidareutveckling av webbapplikationen är en implementering av ett system för validering. I nuläget verifieras inte informationen av mer än den som rapporterar in denna, utan ytterligare verifiering från flera källor/användare behövs för att stärka trovärdheten på informationen. / Abstract In today's traffic, congestion occurs on a daily basis due to different events in the traffic, such as accidents, wildlife or other hazards. Queues are often formed due to lack of information or late broadcasting of information about the events. This work develops a simple web service aimed at users who want and can report in the daily events that affect traffic flow. The service is fast to load on mobile devices and includes a simple form for reporting of events, based on four main types. Data are published not only on the web service but are also spread on to three different social networking services and blogs. One problem with the web application that was not resolved during the work is the adaption to different screen sizes for different mobile devices. The performance of the rescaling varies with screen size and browser of the mobile device used. A further development of the web application is to implement a system for validation. At present no information is verified by more than the user who initially reported the information, therefore further verification from multiple sources / users is needed to strengthen the credibility of the information.

This media studies thesis is a series of digitally-made composites/collages visually inspired by popular text posts from Tumblr. The text posts -- and the images inspired by them -- reflect the ironic and sarcastic humor teens and 20-somethings use to cope with mental health issues.

Background The rules of marketing are changing all the time and companies have to develop new types of marketing to survive in the hard competition today. Technology has taken marketing in a new direction, where online marketing is the most dynamic and fast-moving field within marketing today. Social media is a part of online marketing that has increased a lot over the past years. Companies in the apparel industry are using social media frequently today as a way to communicate with their customers and are now being able to communicate and reach to their consumers to a much lower cost than ever before.Research Question: - What should a small and medium sized enterprise in the fashion industry consider when approaching social media successfully as a marketing strategy?Method: This thesis is based on a qualitative study with mainly in-depth interviews. We have held interviews with several respondents within our research field but with knowledge in different areas. We believe that this gives an overall perspective to the problem.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to increase our knowledge of how social media can be used as a marketing tool by SMEs in the fashion industry.Conclusions in short: Our main conclusion to the research is that to work with social medium in a successful way as a small or medium sized fashion company you need devotion. There is no ”right” way, and the strategy takes time. Everything should be well planned according to the nature of the business and the goals. Furthermore it is important to realize that social media is not focused on creating sales, but instead on building relationships and giving you as a business owner an insight to your customers’ minds. / Program: Master in Fashion Management with specialisation in Fashion Marketing and Retailing

Fish Out of Water: A Transmedia Adaptation of The Little Mermaid is a critical examination of how by using transmedia approaches to storytelling we are able to make characters with less common background more relatable. In this project the story of Maria, a first generation student, is told through the mediums of vlogs, blog posts, tumblr, and twitter.

Online fandoms are capable of various feats; from influencing the TV shows they watch to funding half-baked convention scams, Tumblr fandoms in particular are infamous across the internet. Their chaotic and intense nature simultaneously leads to intense bouts of creative activity, pumping hundreds of thousands of fan works into the Tumblr ecosystem every year. In November of 2022, the Tumblr community collectively invented a fake Martin Scorsese movie named Goncharov, creating massing amounts of fanart, fanfiction, memes, and posts for a “lost piece of media” that never actually existed. While existing studies have focused on the construction of identity through Tumblr fan communities, or the experiences of LGBTQ social media users on Tumblr, there is little to no research on individual fandom events that affect Tumblr as an entire community. In turn, this study aims to answer the following questions: 1) “How did Goncharov fans collaboratively tell and maintain a cohesive story through the production of transmedia Tumblr posts?” 296 transmedia posts produced by the Goncharov fandom were analyzed by a framework developed around an adapted approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Additional theories were incorporated into later analysis, including discussion of transmedial storyworlds, narrative transportation, and collaborative storytelling. The results suggested that the Goncharov fandom was more committed to providing context about its invented nature, rather than committing to a strong sense of immersion. Furthermore, its posts resulted in cases of accidental narrative transportation while simultaneously lacking character and story consistency.

Empirically based on a series of focus groups with college-age women, this thesis examines how the affordances of anonymity and audience specificity facilitate both intimate personal expression and political participation on the Tumblr platform. In dialogue with literature on self disclosure and privacy, I seek to broaden our understanding of the mediated contexts that provide space for women’s voices online. The privacy afforded by Tumblr’s registration policies allows users more flexibility in terms of self-presentation than sites such as Facebook, which are necessarily linked to one’s offline identity through “real name only” policies. The use of pseudonyms contributes to a larger culture of anonymity on the platform, emboldening users to express themselves more freely and with less consequence. Specifically, Tumblr norms encourage the communication of emotions other than happiness or significant “life events” – instead providing a space for girls to express culturally devalued emotions such as sadness and anger. These kinds of intimate and cathartic expressions were made to an (imagined) audience of close friends and strangers in which parents and acquaintances were importantly absent. The reduced pressure of explanation, a limited (often like-minded) audience and the lowered-stakes of anonymity, are all also key features that encouraged feminist expression online. For focus group participants, the possibility of back-and-forth Facebook debates with relatives or former classmates kept them quiet. They described these interactions as exhausting, not as true conversations but as times when they needed to give long explanatory defenses as to why their concerns were issues at all. While debate is often assumed to be as a positive, constructive element of political discourse, this research calls into question the ways in which these ideals contribute to the silencing of women online and ask us to rethink what it means to say that “the personal is political.”

Submitted by Quesia do Carmo Silva (quesia.carmo@hotmail.com) on 2017-10-24T12:26:26Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação-quesiafinal_cd.pdf: 3145915 bytes, checksum: e01cb1afc4208a02ca6ba9c52de33bf1 (MD5) / Rejected by Maria Auxiliadora da Silva Lopes (silopes@ufba.br), reason: Prezada Quesia, Favor inserir seu trabalho na Coleção de Dissertações. Você inseriu na Coleção de Teses. Saudações, Maria Auxiliadora Biblioteca Anísio Teixeira/Faced on 2017-10-25T11:18:57Z (GMT) / Submitted by Quesia do Carmo Silva (quesia.carmo@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-17T21:49:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação-quesiafinal_cd.pdf: 3145915 bytes, checksum: e01cb1afc4208a02ca6ba9c52de33bf1 (MD5) / Rejected by Maria Auxiliadora da Silva Lopes (silopes@ufba.br), reason: Prezada Quesia, Você inseriu seu trabalho na Coleção de Teses da PPGE. Favor alterar e inserir na Coleção de Dissertação do PPGE. on 2017-12-19T17:03:38Z (GMT) / Submitted by Quesia do Carmo Silva (quesia.carmo@hotmail.com) on 2017-12-20T11:41:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação-quesiafinal_cd.pdf: 3145915 bytes, checksum: e01cb1afc4208a02ca6ba9c52de33bf1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora da Silva Lopes (silopes@ufba.br) on 2017-12-22T16:18:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação-quesiafinal_cd.pdf: 3145915 bytes, checksum: e01cb1afc4208a02ca6ba9c52de33bf1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-22T16:18:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertação-quesiafinal_cd.pdf: 3145915 bytes, checksum: e01cb1afc4208a02ca6ba9c52de33bf1 (MD5) / CNPq / Houve nos últimos anos um incremento do ativismo nas redes sociais na internet. Cada vez mais pessoas utilizam desses espaços virtuais para aprender, divulgar e discutir diversos temas relacionados à política, injustiças, preconceitos e opressões. As redes têm sido também locais de formação para movimentos sociais, sendo o movimento feminista um dos que mais vem se destacando no ciberespaço ultimamente. As feministas em rede tem utilizado diversas estratégias de visibilidade, sendo uma delas o compartilhamento de narrativas pessoais. Essa visibilidade tem permitido o crescimento do número de mulheres autodeclaradas feministas e que publicam diariamente narrativas feministas na rede. Um dos sites de redes sociais mais populares, principalmente entre os jovens, e que possui um grande número de conteúdo feminista, é o Tumblr e, por isso, ele foi escolhido como campo empírico de análise. Tendo isso em vista, o problema da pesquisa foi: como o feminismo tem sido disseminado no Tumblr e que pedagogias ele cria? A dissertação teve como objetivo discutir como o feminismo tem sido disseminado em rede e que tipos de pedagogias ele cria a partir da análise de narrativas de blogs autodeclarados feministas no Tumblr. O método utilizado foi o da pesquisa qualitativa, de cunho descritivo e analítico e o formato da dissertação seguiu o modelo multipaper. Dentre outros aspectos a pesquisa verificou que as redes sociais tem sido um espaço de prática de uma pedagogia crítica feminista, onde seus membros consomem produtos da indústria cultural de massa mas, ao mesmo tempo, os criticam, denunciam e reivindicam melhores representações para as minorias. / ABSTRACT In recent years there has been an increase in online activism. More and more people have been using those virtual spaces to learn, propagate and discuss plenty of themes concerning politics, injustice, prejudice and oppression. Social networks have also been used as learning environments for social movements, feminism being one of the most prominent nowadays in cyberspace. Feminists online have been using numerous visibility strategies, and personal narrative is one of them. Such visibility enables the increasing number of self-identified feminist women who share their feminist narratives online every day. Up to the end of the research period, Tumblr was one of the most popular social networks platforms, specially among young people. The website has a massive amount of feminist narratives and that‘s the reason why it was chosen as the empirical field of analysis. Considering this, the problem was: how has feminism been spread on Tumblr and which pedagogies does it create? The research aims at understanding how feminism is spread online and which pedagogies it creates by analyzing the narratives of self-identified feminist blogs on Tumblr. The methodology used was qualitative, descriptive and analytical and the thesis followed the multipaper format. Among other aspects, the research revealed that social networks have been spaces of critic feminist pedagogy practice, in which its members consume mass cultural industry products while criticizing, denouncing and fighting for better representation for minorities.