Number of Posts: 10
Posts 1 - 10
Weißt du, was diese Emojis wirklich bedeuten?
(Do you know what these emojis really mean?)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 30.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, misunderstanding, punctuation, texting
Summary | We cannot imagine texting nowadays without emojis. They have become as important to us as punctuation. They serve to add a specific tone to our messages or to present them in a specific light. They are however also very easy to misunderstand. Do we really know what the emojis stand for? Here is an emoji quiz to text your emoji literacy!
Image Description | Artsy photograph of women texting and using emojis, a GIF, and emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), gifs, smartphone
Wege aus der Peinlichkeit
(Exit ways out of embarrassment)
Newspaper | die Weltwoche
Date | 28.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, gender, misunderstanding, online dating, politeness, research/study, texting, youth
Summary | Emojis have entered our communication with no turning back but using them is a minefield of misunderstanding. It is especially risky in the initial stages of texting with a love interest: studies show that people tend to imitate the communication patterns of their interlocutor if they are in love with them. Because women are more communicative than men, they tend to be the ones who are imitated in such a scenario. But men, beware! Do not go overboard with your heart emojis, it's too girly. One should however also refrain from making overly abrupt changes to ones emoji habits as it can seem distanced and elitist if one stops to use emojis altogether.
Image Description | N/A
«In Japan steht für Danke, im Westen für Beten»
("In Japan it means thank you, in the West it signals praying")
Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 20.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, marketing, misunderstanding, research/study, texting, translation
Summary | Keith Broni, one of the first emoji translators world-wide, has been chosen from 500 applicants. He has researched the use of emojis at the University of London and he is an expert of how people from different cultures understand emojis. He works as a makerting consultant to various companies and advises them on how to use emojis as a corporation. Using emojis can be fraught with risk as hand gestures can mean very different things in different cultures. Even within the same culture emoji use can be risky. At this point, it is more risky not to use any emojis in casual texting because of the negativity effect which means that messsages without emojis seem cold or distanced.
Image Description | N/A
Le point à la fin du SMS: un mauvais signe
(A period at the end of a text: a bad sign)
Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 5.1.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | abbreviations, misunderstanding, punctuation, spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | Texting is becoming very popular among younger people who will soon be getting their smartphone transplanted on their hand. The language of texting is "cool", does not necessarily follow traditional rules, uses phonetics and abbreviations. Moreover, to replace the tone of voice and other nonverbal cues that are lacking in writing, people use emoticons. Now, it seems that adding a period at the end of a text can lead to misunderstandings.
Image Description | Photograph of a businessman walking and looking at his phone
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone
Das Schweigen der Emojis
(The Silence of Emojis)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 12.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | email, emojis, misunderstanding, texting
Summary | Our written and computer-mediated communication is requiring more and more non-textual signs. First the likes of this " :-) " came along and now text messages and emails have begun to look like someone spilled colorful candy all over them. Emojis also easily lead to misunderstandings, so the manicure emoji can be misinterpreted as a weird foot by people who are not in the know.
Image Description | N/A
"Die Flut der Zeichen ist enorm"
("The flood of signs is enormous")
Newspaper | Stuttgarter Zeitung
Date | 27.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, misunderstanding, texting
Summary | The production of signs is in a stage of unprecedented proliferation - everyone partakes in textual production online and so the amount of meaningful signs out there is larger than ever. This is quite interesting with respect to emojis because we have only just started coming up with conventions of their use. We are still negotiating how emoji use can be codified. It is common to think, for instance, that a response without emoji to a message with emoji indicates negative feelings.
Image Description | Emojis and hand gestures.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), male(s)
Have you got text appeal?
Newspaper | The Evening Standard
Date | 4.4.2014
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | misunderstanding, online dating, texting
Summary | Negotiating relationships and sexualities via new media can be challenging. The online forum hetexted.com helps people (mainly women) 'decipher' the social meanings of text messages. Many women use the site to get advice about what their love interest meant with a text message and how they should respond depending on their intentions. The creators of the site report that the demand is huge so that they even expanded to London as well (they had started in New York). They have however realized that dating customs and hence texting conventions are culturally distinctive.
Image Description | N/A
Was It Something I Texted?
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.11.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | misunderstanding, sexting, texting
Summary | A woman waits for her current love interest to text back. The night before she had sent him a text with sexual innuendo and he hadn't texted back until morning. Now she is obsessing over checking her phone constantly to see if he texted back. She starts over-interpreting how he may have misunderstood or what might have tipped him off. She concludes that, ultimately, it would be better if they figured out this early that they are no good match. Finally, he texts her back.
Image Description | Illustration of a woman blow-drying her hair with the smartphone laying nearby.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone
To Text or Not to Text: A Dating Conundrum
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 28.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | misunderstanding, texting
Summary | A woman and a man meet, show interest in each other, and go on a date. After that they text for two months without ever seeing each other again face to face. The woman is upset that the man does not aske her out again but she cannot overcome traditional conventions about women not initiating a date. After two months she breaks up the non-relationship by saying that she does not need a penpal. Then the man invites her for dinner and they get married several years after.
Image Description | Illustration of a man and a woman with a giant smartphone separating them and the woman holding a chainsaw.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone
Autocorrect and the Tao of Texting
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 6.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | autocorrect, misunderstanding, texting
Summary | Most people are annoyed by the automatic correction (autocorrect) program installed on their smartphones by default. It changes typos in text messages but often misunderstand's the writer's intention. Autocorrect can feel like an uninvited content sabotage of one's messages. If we however did not have autocorrect, our messages would likely all be mistyped to the degree of non-intellegibility. Autocorrect, through its seeming random misunderstandings opens up opportunities for philosophic though or "gives voice to the voiceless" such as cats or babies playing with phones and autocorrect stepping in to 'translate'. So while autocorrect can be annoying, fun can be had with it as well.
Image Description | Illustration of one of the exemplified autocorrect mishaps: woman reading an autocorrected (visualized) message about a woman having had a bear attack (should have said heart attack).
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone
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