Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 5
Posts 1 - 5

Headscarf emojis not an option – but teenage girl fixes that

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 14.9.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis
Summary | Rayouf Alhumedhi is a 15-year-old teenage girl who lives in Germany. After noticing that there was no hijab emoji to represent Muslim women, she sent a proposal to Unicode. When she was asked why she wears a headscarf, she said that she actually feels liberated; she can choose what she wants to cover, and this way people see her past her beauty and for her knowledge.
Image Description | Five emojis representing different options for the "headscarf emoji"
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

So Google wants to make emojis for real women? Here are a few suggestions

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 23.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, gender
Summary | The available emojis are a little traditional and stereotypical. Google is now asking for more female emojis that reflect reality. The author of the article has a few suggestions regarding new female emojis (e.g. resting bitch face, mansplain strain, empowerment batteries, Netflix and chilled by my own inertia, menstruation magician, etc.)
Image Description | Images of 6 alternative female emojis
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

Google proposes new set of female emojis to promote equality

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 11.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender
Summary | Google proposed new emojis representing gender diversity. The new set of emojis includes for instance female engineers, chemists, plumbers, and farmers. Millions of people around the world use emojis, so it is important to represent people accurately.
Image Description | Images of the new set of female emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

What happens when your mother discovers emojis?

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 28.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Summary | The author of the article talks about her 70-year-old mother's use of emojis. Since she's had an iPhone, her mother has been using emojis a lot. Some news media have been covering the emoji phenomenon for a while now; they claim that emojis are like hieroglyphics, and that digital natives communicate using a special code, unfamiliar to adults. The author claims that we still use and need words, but emojis add more nuance and are straighforward.
Image Description | Photograph of a woman in a room full of emojis; she has a big 'smiling face with sunglasses emoji' on her head.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

:) them or :( them, emojis make our messages feel more like us

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 14.6.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | Some people are happy about the new 'emojify' feature that Apple offers, and some people don't like it and think that future generations won't be able to understand the English language. Famous cognitivist Stephen Pinker argues in favor of such communicative features; people adapt their language to the medium they use. If people text or tweet, it doesn't mean they won't be able to communicate in other ways; the same holds true for emojis. Emojis are useful to convey information that is hard to transmit via text (e.g. tone of voice, facial expressions). Having representative emojis (e.g. different skin colors) is also important since they help construct users' identity. Some people are not totally happy with the set of emojis offered now; they still convey certain ideologies and norms (e.g. about gender).
Image Description | Photograph of a woman in a room full of emojis; she has a big 'smiling face with sunglasses emoji' on her head.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

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