Rysjedal is part of the Understanding Masculinity and Gaming project. She is currently working on her PhD project about how gaming behavior and communicational aspects can be a way of channeling masculinity. 

Earlier research on gaming masculinity tends to rely on notions of toxic and hegemonic masculinities. In Rysjedal's PhD project, she aims to get a better understanding of expressions of masculinity in gaming discourses. As part of the UMG project, the aim of the study is to contribute to new understandings of masculinity and gaming. 

The project’s main approach is to understand how masculinity is expressed through both gaming behavior and communicational elements. The focus will be on how masculinity is expressed, and by this approach, she considers masculinity as something that goes beyond the binary and can be expressed by all genders. The project’s overarching question is: How is masculinity expressed in game culture, and in what way are behavior in games and rhetorical devices used as expressions of masculinities? As the question indicates, the goal is to examine how gaming behavior, as well as rhetorical statements, channel different ways of expressing masculinity in gaming discourses.

In order to explore and understand masculinity in game culture, Rysjedal will be studying two Norwegian streaming channels on Twitch.tv and YouTube, including their chat and comment section, and two fan forums. The cases have been chosen due to their status as two of the most popular male game streamers in Norway. The fan forums also hold a certain level of popularity, with daily posting and conversations between the forum participants. With an ethnographical approach, Rysjedal will study these channels and forums with the aim to understand how masculinity is expressed amongst gamers.

Academic lecture

• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2024). Masculinity: aiming to understand expressions of masculinity in gaming discourses. Presentation of PhD project at CDN Seminar: Futures of Digital Narrative Research. (external link)
• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2024). Masculinity: aiming to understand expressions of masculinity in gaming discourses. Retitled from: Male Gamers: how gaming behavior and choice of words works as ways of expressing masculinity . (external link)
• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2024). Report from ongoing study: data collection 2024. (external link)
• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2023). Male gamers: a discourse analysis of how gaming behavior and rhetorical devices works as tools for expressing masculinity. (external link)

Lecture

• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2024). Forum Studies: Three-step walkthrough of studying forums. (external link)
• Rysjedal, Ida Martine Gard (2024). Gamingplattformer og «Masculinity: aiming to understand expressions of masculinity in gaming discourses» . (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Gard, I.M.S. (2023) Transgressive spillerkarakterer: Kjønnsstereotyper og giftig spillkultur rundt The Last of Us Part 2. Master thesis. The Universiy of Bergen. Available from: https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/handle/11250/3075046. 

Rysjedal has a bachelors degree in Media and Communication, within the course Media Institutions: Market and Democracy, where she focused on media institutions and freedom of speech. In her bachelors dissertation she critically discussed the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission (Pressens Faglige Utvalg) verdict of the NRK program Folkeopplysningen: Make Lillestrøm Great Again. With a critical view she discussed media institutions' freedom of speech.

In 2023, Rysjedal finished her Master thesis in game studies, within Media and Communication. In her prosject, she conducted a forum study focusing on the toxic gamer culture and gender stereotypes connected to the game The Last of Us Part 2. Focusing on the transgressive - or boundary breaking - elements of the characters in the game, she investigated how expectations to gender, and stereotypical understandings of gender, were present in the toxic parts of the gamer culture.