Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 19
Posts 1 - 10

Donald Trump Threatens Ted Cruz’s Wife, Eliciting Angry Retort

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 23.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | hashtags, misunderstanding, politics, Twitter
Summary | Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have started a public feud on Twitter over their spouses. Trump thinks that Cruz has used footage of Melania Trump modeling nude for GQ magazine in a commercial against Trump. Trump then threatened to reveal secrets about Heidi Cruz. It turned out the anti-Trump advertisement was not made or paid for by Cruz and Cruz shamed Trump via Twitter for threatening his wife with the hashtag #classless.
Image Description | Image of Ted Cruz speaking with his wife Heidi in the background.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Emojis to grace Pepsi products in summer campaign

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 19.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, hashtags, marketing, social media
Summary | Pepsi is using emojis to market their product because it is the "language of today" that transcends cultures and is intellegible for everyone. The new campaign also includes the two hasthags #PepsiMoji and #SayItWithPepsi to encourage consumers to post about their purchase on social media. Coca Cola recently had a similar campaign with first names on their bottles. They had been very successful with making consumers engage with the company through social media. Consumers basically did free marketing for them by posting pictures of Coke bottles with their names on their private accounts.
Image Description | Pepsi bottles with emojis and Coca Cola bottles with first names.
Image Tags | emojis, logo

What Happened to Who?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | abbreviations, grammar, language threat, politics, Twitter
Summary | More and more politicians have begun replacing the relative pronoun "who" with "that" in sentences like ''people that come with a legal visa and overstay''. Although some dictionaries say this is an acceptable for, the New York Times' style sheet does not condone using "that" instead of "who". It denies the mentioned persons their humanity. This trend is unsurprising considering that our communication is increasingly happening on platforms like Twitter that only allow 140 characters so that we invent loads of abbreviations like "LOL" and "TTYL".
Image Description | Artwork copying Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a few high-profile Tweets with spelling mistakes.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

So, Is That a Thing?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 16.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, smartphone
Summary | The smartphone keeps us on the running at all times up to the point that we are overflooded with information on a daily basis. No wonder that the phrase "is that a thing?" makes sense to most people today. It is a lazy way to express that something is a significant state of affairs.
Image Description | Collage art abstractly illustrating "a thing" versus "not a thing".
Image Tags | text

President @realdonaldtrump

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 3.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, hashtags, politics, smartphone, Twitter
Summary | During his first 100 days, Trump tweeted a lot. His most used word in Twitter was "Great" (then: very, today, fake, news). His most common hashtag was "MAGA", the topic he most tweeted about was the media, and his favorite interjection is "Enojy!". Trump does not use a lot of emojis in his tweets, but his most common emoji is the American flag. Also, his most common hour for tweeting is 8am, and he mostly uses his iPhone.
Image Description | N/A

Smartphone Era Politics

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 23.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, language threat, research/study, smartphone
Summary | Smartphones are changing everything: the news media, politics, and most fundamentally how humans communicate and connect with one another. A UK study claims that we check our phones over 200 times a day. All the app notifications are addictive. Despite this extensive use of a communication device, we most rarely use it to communicate with one another.
Image Description | N/A

France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | The French language is notoriously difficult to write and computer keyboards are not very well suited to facilitate typing for French typists. Important letters and diacritics are oftentimes hidden behind complicated shortcut combinations and discourage people from writing correctly in French. Since keyboards arrived, the false rumor that diacritics can be omitted on capital letters has spread around. Now the French governement is looking into designing a better keyboard standard for French typists.
Image Description | N/A

Are Emoticons And Emojis Destroying Our Language?

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Newspaper | Huffington Post
Date | 13.8.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | Emojis are popular, especially among young people. Older people are a little worried about that; emojis may harm our language. Two young female interviewees talk about the new set of emojis that just came out and how happy they are. Emoji is a universal language; everyone can understand it. What does that mean for the future of language? It seems that after years of progress, we're regressing back to the age of hieroglyphics.
Image Description | Digital image of four yellow-face emojis, and photograph of a passage of "Emoji Dick" in emoji.
Image Tags | emojis

Can a GIF Work Better Than Words?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.9.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, language threat, word/writing
Summary | An interviewee claims that using GIFs allows her to express complex feelings and emotions in a a couple seconds. GIFs are becoming more and more popular (i.e. on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.). Words and emojis are becoming old-fashioned.
Image Description | GIF representing three men looking at their smartphone.
Image Tags | gifs, male(s), smartphone

Emojis: The death of the written language?

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Newspaper | CNBC
Date | 24.6.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, misunderstanding, word/writing
Summary | People are using more and more emojis, which can be seen as a threat to written language. Indeed, people are starting to replace words with emojis in order to communicate a feeling or emotion, and according to the author of the article, this is worrying. Moreover, using emojis can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Finally, if school start to incorporate emojis in their curriculum, it can be perceived as a regress back to hierogylphics.
Image Description | Getty image of a keyboard composed of emojis, and image of a series of Apple emojis representing diversity.
Image Tags | emojis, keyboard

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