Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 22
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

La police du fun n'aime pas vous savoir seul

(The police of "fun" doesn't like to know that you're feeling lonely)

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Newspaper | 24 heures
Date | 26.8.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, texting
Summary | When you type a text and specific words, you can see emojis pop up. If you type "alone" for instance, a sad-looking emoji appears. However, can't the word "alone" mean something else? Does it have to be something bad?
Image Description | Portrait of the author.
Image Tags | 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

Mit dem Selfiestick im Späti rumeiern

(Egging around at the deli with the selfie stick)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 9.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | anglicisms, artificial intelligence, emojis, Facebook, fake news, language threat, selfie
Summary | The new German dictionary "Duden" has added 5000 new key words, many of which are originally English. Now, having been included in the most authoritative dictionary in German language, they are officially part of the German language as anglicisms. Such words include fake news, emoji, selfie, chatbot, and liking ("liken" in German with the English word stem "like" and the German infinitive verb ending "-en").
Image Description | N/A

Emoji

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 2.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, marketing, smartphone
Summary | Nobody can imagine smartphone communication nowadays without emojis. Now there is an animated film starring emojis. The critics are not praising it. Apparently, the characters are quite one-dimensional (which makes sense however since they are emojis) and the product placement advertising tech firms in the movie is too frequent and obvious.
Image Description | N/A

Tränen der Freude

(Tears of joy)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 30.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, Twitter
Summary | The most frequently used emoji on Twitter is the tears-of-joy or laughing-tears emoji. Even an animated film with and about emojis is coming to movie theaters soon. Also, the World Emoji Day was in July.
Image Description | N/A

Der Herr der Smileys

(The Lord of Smileys)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 29.7.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | computer programming, emojis, misunderstanding, translation
Summary | The Unicode chief, Mark Davis, assesses which new emojis make it into the Unicode which all major tech firms use. Anyone can propose an emoji but they have to argue why it is a globally significant symbol. They are then written into the Unicode which is a computer code that works for all languages. Tech firms then choose the font for the letters and emojis in which these symbols appear on their devices. Tech companies have chosen more similar emoji fonts over the last years to avoid misunderstandings between devices of different providers if the emojis are displayed differently.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee Mark Davis.
Image Tags | male(s)

Techie teens help bridge generational digital gap

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 16.5.2017
Language | English
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | digitized education, emojis, gender, texting, youth
Summary | A grandmother texted her grandson a series of emojis to ask him how the pets were and how the hockey game was. Most of the seniors are not as tech-savvy as she is. As a result, three high school teenage girls decided to create a new organization called GTG Tech in order to help older people get more familiar with new media. They hold free training lessons once a month. Most of the seniors seeking help are women. The girls and older people think that the intergenerational exchange is very rich.
Image Description | N/A

Le gardien du temple des émojis

(The guardian of the emoji temple)

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | censorship, diversity, emojis
Summary | Mark Davis (President of the Unicode Consortium), who lives in Zurich, talks about emojis. Anyone can submit new emoji proposals; but the proposal needs to be convincing. The Consortium has been trying to be more progressive, which is why people can now use same-sex couple emojis, or a hijab emoji. The Consortium does not accept any brand emojis nor famous people emojis (although people would like to see Jesus and Justin Bieber). Keith Winstein claims that nobody should have the right to tell other people which images they can or cannot use.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Davis
Image Tags | male(s)

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