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.

A robot capable of balancing itself on two wheels has been built and programmed. While balancing, the robot keeps within a limited area. The robot has a face with two eyes and a mouth, consisting of LED-matrices, which switch between six different facial expressions. The robot is programmed using Arduino boards, one of which implements PID regulators to control the motors.