A wink and a nod: The role of emojis in forming digital communities

Abstract

As digital interactions become more global, individuals who bring divergent practices ‘to the keyboard’ must interact with other participants who come to the digital space with different cultural norms and expectations. This study explores the interface between local expectations and global practice through emoji use in online gaming – a venue which brings people from around the globe together on a common ‘playing field’. Since emojis were originally designed to tap into universals in human experience and expression, they are a ready-made resource through which individuals can integrate their culture-based expectations with communicative norms that are rooted in the common denominators of the (global) digital environment. Using live chat data from the game streaming platform Twitch, this study examines emojis posted to the open chat room during game streams of one female and one male gamer. The analysis examines the ways that participants use these semiotic images to orient toward gaming communities of practice and claim identities within gaming groups. It also explores whether emoji use is affected by the gender of the streamer. Analysis indicates that participants in the man’s stream differ from participants woman’s stream in the ways they use emojis to claim community membership and employ emojis as phatic devices.

Comparison between Chinese and Japanese Social Media Requests

“…Messages without emoji may sometimes sound too harsh, blunt or unfriendly, especially in messages between peers. This is, at least in part, in line with Graham's (2019) contention, namely, that emoji are employed as phatic devices. Third, emoji can replace some words or sentences.…”

Emojis in Indonesian Intergenerational Family WhatsApp Group

“…Although ITC (information, technology, and communication) companies, such as Google and Apple, designed emojis to be used broadly and universally, the use may vary among users. People from different cultures, ages, and gender group can have a different interpretation of emojis since the pictorial words are subject to multi-interpretation (Graham, 2019). Different contexts where emojis are used can also create different meanings and interpretations.…”

“…According to Graham (2007), emojis are adopted by more global communities. Hence, emojis are naturally used differently by people from various social group indicated by different ages, gender, geographical location, and status (Graham, 2019;Alshenqeeti, 2016). They show identity and membership to a particular speech community by serving as a phatic language (Graham, 2019).…”

“…Hence, emojis are naturally used differently by people from various social group indicated by different ages, gender, geographical location, and status (Graham, 2019;Alshenqeeti, 2016). They show identity and membership to a particular speech community by serving as a phatic language (Graham, 2019). Interestingly, although emojis are usually developed by a local speech community, they also serve to address language barrier issues encountered by the digital community built by people from various socio-cultural backgrounds due to universality of visual, emotional messages (Graham, 2019).…”

Exploring the Emerging Domain of Research on Video Game Live Streaming in Web of Science: State of the Art, Changes and Trends

“…Their focus is more on providing solutions to problems, as such, they particularly rely on experiments [ 73 , 74 , 75 ], the development of applications, and applied engineering [ 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ]. Therefore, they do not need a strong grounding in well-established theories, although some do occasionally appear; for example, the Lyapunov optimization theory [ 16 ], the psychophysiological approach [ 80 ], Blommaert’s framework of critical discourse analysis, and Computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) [ 81 ]. Figure 2 depicts the entire domain and the most commonly-used frameworks for improving the knowledge base.…”