Abstract
The use of emoji in digital communication can convey a wealth of emotions and concepts that otherwise would take many words to express. Emoji have become a popular form of communication, with researchers claiming emoji represent a type of “ubiquitous language” that can span different languages. In this paper however, we explore how emoji are also used in highly personalised and purposefully secretive ways. We show that emoji are repurposed for something other than their “intended” use between close partners, family members and friends. We present the range of reasons why certain emoji get chosen, including the concept of “emoji affordance” and explore why repurposing occurs. Normally used for speed, some emoji are instead used to convey intimate and personal sentiments that, for many reasons, their users cannot express in words. We discuss how this form of repurposing must be considered in tasks such as emoji-based sentiment analysis.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-4503-5620-6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 21 Apr 2018 |
Event | ACM CHI 2018 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018) - Montreal, Canada Duration: 21 Apr 2018 → 26 Apr 2018 https://chi2018.acm.org/ |
Conference
Conference | ACM CHI 2018 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018) |
---|---|
Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Montreal |
Period | 21/04/18 → 26/04/18 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- Emoji
- Computer Mediated Communication
- Personalisation;
- Digital Intimacy