Abstract: Text messages often contain more than words, such as emojis, to convey one’s feelings and thoughts. These small, digital images have made a major impact on the way individuals communicate by providing a visual aid to convey emotions and expressions that were only possible through face-to-face communication. In the past, communications research has been primarily focused on in-person interactions, but now in the digital age, interpersonal relationships are examined and measured on a wide variety of online platforms. This allows for online communicative behaviours to be observed and recorded for data analysis. The focus of this study is to observe how emojis are used in the context of text messages. Most high school students have grown up with instant messaging and are comfortable using emojis to convey their thoughts and feelings. Although adults have access to the same technology, we hypothesised that they would be less likely to use emojis in comparison to high school students. Emoji usage among high school students and adults were analyzed to understand the differences of emoji text usage between each group. The communicative intent behind emojis and the frequency of how emojis were used are examined and compared among the two age groups. Consistent with our initial hypotheses, the surveys showed that high school students used a higher frequency of emojis per conversation in comparison to older age groups and that they were more likely to use emojis regardless of the relationship they have with the other person. The data also revealed that high schoolers used emojis for a wider variety of purposes, not simply to emphasize an emotion.
Keywords: emojis, communications, text messages, social media.
Title: A Comparison Study of Emoji Use among High School Students and Adults
Author: Ye Eun Cho
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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