Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 12
Posts 1 - 10

Wege aus der Peinlichkeit

(Exit ways out of embarrassment)

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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

Why you should think twice before using emojis in your work emails

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 14.8.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | email, emojis, research/study
Summary | People shouldn't use emojis in their work emails. A new study analyzed the effects of emojis in work emails, and employees actually claimed that people who use emojis in their work emails seem less competent.
Image Description | Images of different emojis, photograph of a man staring at his phone, and woman holding her head and looking worried.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), male(s)

Von Japan zu Kim-Kardashian und Vampir-Emojis

(From Japan to Kim Kardashian and vampire emojis)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 20.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, gender, marketing, research/study, Twitter, What's up Switzerland
Summary | Invented in Japan, emojis are now features in films, art museums, and the marketing strategy of Kim Kardashian. More importantly, they are used in 95% of the WhatsApp data collected by "What's up, Switzerland?". 92% off all internet users use emojis regularly, 57% of emojis on Twitter are from women, and only 7% of people use the peach emoji to mean the actual fruit.
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")

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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

'Ha' Isn't a Laugh. Seriously?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | abbreviations, emojis, Facebook, research/study, texting, word/writing
Summary | People express laughs in different ways when the text or otherwise communicate online. Some type a version of "haha", others write "LOL" or a similar abbreviation but none of these messages mean that one is actually laughing. Linguists who have analyzed thousands of texts claim that LOLs signal interlocutor involvement like an "uh-huh" on the phone.
Image Description | Cartoon of various people laughing with various noises.
Image Tags | male(s)

Social Insecurity? internet Turns Boomers Into Twits

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 5.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook, misunderstanding, research/study, youth
Summary | Elders are coming to Facebook and it's not pretty. Most young people find their older relatives' activities on Facebook cringey because they appear to regress back into their younger selves which is somehow undignified for the elderly. They also sometimes use wrong emojis because they tend to be too small for them to properly see. Young people are moving on to other platforms.
Image Description | Images of Cher, Donald Trump, and Larry King as well as some of their Tweets.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), Twitter

Mein Wort in Bots Ohr

(My word in bot's ear)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 29.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, emojis, misunderstanding, research/study
Summary | Chatbots are currently exploding. Some say that by 2020 humans will communicate with chatbots more than with other humans. Chatbots are digital chat partners that help organize one's schedule, keep track of shopping lists, can help book holidays, and provide various other information from within a mesaging app. Polls show, however, that only one in four people would consider using a chatbot right now. That may be because they do not understand all questions yet and there is room for improvement. They are designed to be great digital conversationalists using a lot of emojis.
Image Description | An illustration visualizing the use of many chatbots while shopping at a grocery store.

Brauchen wir ein Emoji mit nicht-binärer Geschlechtsidentität?

(Do we need an emoji with a non-binary gender identity?)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 14.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender, research/study
Summary | A new package of emojis will be released soon. One of them represents a person who is neither entirely male nor female, i.e. of non-binary gender identity. It is questionable whether it is worthwhile to represent such a small minority, seeing that there is no redhead emoji either because only 2% of the global population are redheads. A linguist of the research project "What's Up, Germany?" however argues that having a gender inclusive emoji is sending a powerful sign and can affect society via language in the long-term.
Image Description | A Getty image of a woman vomiting a rainbow, a tweet about the gender inclusive emoji, and a few GIFs of celebrities.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), gifs, male(s)

Diese Emojis solltest du dir beim Flirten sparen

(You should avoid these emojis when flirting)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 24.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, gender, misunderstanding, online dating, research/study
Summary | Emojis can be quite tricky because they can lead to misunderstandings. This is particularly problematic in online dating. The dating app Clover analysed their users' chats to find out which emojis are a success in online dating and which emojis should be avoided. They found out that women like the hearts-for-eyes emoji, the monkeys and other animals, as well as the tongue emoji. They dislike the eggplant emoji and emoijis displaing strength, for instance the biceps of fist emoji. Men like the kissing emoji as well as the cheeky tongue-out emoji. They dislike the ring and the poop emoji.
Image Description | The emojis women/men like and dislike.
Image Tags | emojis

Punkt: Am Ende

(Period: the end)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, language threat, punctuation, research/study, texting
Summary | The neutral punctuation mark "." is disappearing from our written language. The most likely reason is that with text messages we no longer need a period to tell us when a sentence is finished. Linguists are not worried about the extinction of the period. Language is ever-changing, they say. It is quite sad though, that the period is being omitted more and more and hardly anyone cares. All debates now center around emojis: can Apple just replace the gun emoji with a water pistol one? Is it racist to use a black emoji as a White person?
Image Description | The sunset over the ocean.

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