Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 7
Posts 1 - 7

Die Frau, die ungewollt mit Emojis ein Haus mietete

(The woman who inadvertently rented a house with emojis)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 24.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, law, misunderstanding
Summary | The debate around whether emojis count as words or seriously meaningful content is very heated - not only in academics but also in law. The Oxford English dictionary only reheated that fire by choosing an emoji as word of the year. Multiple law cases have centered on misunderstandings around emoji use, most recently a case where a woman indicated interest in renting a house with emojis (flamenco dancer, dancer girls, squirrel, comet, a victory sign, and a bottle of Champagne). The house owner sued her for using misleading emojis after she decided not to rent the house after all.
Image Description | An image of a woman's hand holding a smartphone and picking out an emoji and a portrait of the Israely judge who worked on the emoji case.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone

Geldstrafe für irreführende Emoji

(Fee for misleading emojis)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 24.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, law, misunderstanding
Summary | A man in Isreal sued a woman over misleading emoji use. The woman had expressed interest in the man's house for rent with the use of many emojis such as the Champagne bottle and then did not follow through with renting the house. The court decided that the woman would have to pay a fee equivalent to CHF 2000.
Image Description | N/A

Emojis on council tax bills: Council puts crying face on residents' statements

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 14.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, law, politeness
Summary | Lambeth citizens are getting emojis on their tax correspondence with their local authorities. To be exact: crying face emojis. One resident tweeted her tax calculations with a crying face emoji next to het balance due. Many find this distasteful since many people struggle to pay their taxes and emojis are just inappropriate for government communication. Emojis are one of the fastest growing languages ever recorded in history and they have surpassed their precursors, Egyptian hieroglyphs, which took centuries to develop.
Image Description | Tweet showing the tax document with emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, Twitter

Wie lustig darf die Polizei sein?

(How funny is the police allowed to be?)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 20.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, law, Twitter
Summary | Various police departments in Germany have taken to Twitter and they are using internet humor: sarcasm, emojis, puns, and so on. This is not funny because the police are supposed to be the butt of the joke and not making the jokes. Tweeting about crimes using emojis is also distasteful and inapropriate.
Image Description | Tweets by the police department of Munich.
Image Tags | Twitter

Emoji-Verbot bei der Polizei

(Emoji prohibition for the police)

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Newspaper | Tagesspiegel
Date | 16.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, law, Twitter
Summary | In a recent tweet by the Saxon local police, they used an emoji. That is inappropriate. The emoji was of a megaphone. That is distasteful because it depicts complicated matters as simple and light-hearted, almost humorous.
Image Description | Photograph of the author.
Image Tags | female(s)

It or not, emoji evolving as language to be taken seriously

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 28.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, law, misunderstanding, threat
Summary | Emojis as legal evidence crop up in court rooms more and more since people communicate much more on various social media. Two cases are known of students being questioned in court because they had posted something negative about school on social media accompanied with gun, bomb, or explosion emojis. Defendants text messages have been presented to the jury as evidence with the emojis because they can signal sarcasm or a joke. A general discussion has opened up about whether emojis should be regarded as evidence in court and if yes, how? Emojis do not have a set meaning, they are very context-dependent.
Image Description | N/A

Antiquiert chatten

(An antiquated chat)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 11.11.2015
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, school, WhatsApp, youth
Summary | Two Swiss high school students adapted the antique myth of Aeneas and Dido into a WhatsApp chat. A school assignment for their Latin class asked students to adapt ancient stories into other media. The two students reinterpreted the storyline as a WhatsApp chat between Dido and Aeneas in Latin with a lot of dramatic language (e.g. indicate shouting with all capital letters or word length with letter repetitions, and communicate emotions with emojis).
Image Description | Screenshot of a WhatsApp chat in Latin with words, emojis, and images.
Image Tags | emojis, WhatsApp

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