Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 29
Posts 21 - 29

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

Gaymoji: A New Language for That Search

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.3.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, research/study, sexting
Summary | The dating app Grindr caters to gay men and is now adding specific emojis - called Gaymojis - to their app. They have noticed that 20% of the messages sent on their platform contain emojis so they are providing emojis specific to the gay dating experience such as a peach with a phone (= bootycall) or an eggplant with a ruler (= well endowed). One linguist says that emojis may take some pressure off of the content of the conversation. Instead of thinking of something to say, emojis just signal that 'I am here and I am interested'.
Image Description | Portrait of the Grindr owners, the Grindr office in LA, and some Gaymojis.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s)

"Die Flut der Zeichen ist enorm"

("The flood of signs is enormous")

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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)

Das sind die beliebtesten Fotos auf Instagram 2016

(These are the most popular photographs on Instagram 2016)

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Newspaper | Hamburger Abendblatt
Date | 1.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, Instagram
Summary | The undefeated queen of Instagram is Selena Gomez. She has the most followers: over one million. Many of the most-liked pictures on Instagram are hers. Another extremely popular picture on Instagram is of Christiano Ronaldo kissing the trophy of the European football championship. The general mood on Instagram is positive with the most popular emojis being hearts and the most popular hashtags revolving around happiness.
Image Description | Various popular Instagram posts.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), Instagram, male(s)

Learn to speak EMOJI: Translator app turns everything you say into popular symbols

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 17.12.2015
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, translation, youth
Summary | Words do not always express the exact feeling people want to transmit, so emojis can help. Thanks to a new app (SpeakEmoji), you can now translate what you want to say (voice) into emojis. Emojis are a new universal language, so this new app is suited for our digital era. The app was first designed to help parents communicate through emojis. In 2015, an emoji was chosen as word of the year because it represented the mood and preocuppations of the year.
Image Description | Screenshots of the SpeakEmoji app, video of the new translator app, and video of how to use emojis in social media
Image Tags | emojis, male(s), social media

Abusar de los "Emojis": ¿el nuevo enemigo del lenguaje?

(Abusing emojis: the new enemy of language?)

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Newspaper | infobae
Date | 13.1.2016
Language | Spanish
Country | Argentina
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, youth
Summary | An Instagram study revealed that emojis are becoming more popular and are replacing words in messages. Linguist Silvia Ramirez Gelbes claims that using emojis allows users to say something very precise in one click -whereas using words would take longer. Are emojis detrimental to written language? According to the linguist, emojis are not harmful and they are not a "youth phenomenon".
Image Description | Photograph of a man (head cut off) holding a selfie stick and taking a selfie; he is also wearing five emoji medals around his neck.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s), selfie stick, smartphone

El impacto de la redes sociales en el lenguaje

(The impact of social media on language)

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Newspaper | infobae
Date | 3.7.2016
Language | Spanish
Country | Argentina
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, social media, spelling
Summary | Social media have an impact on the Spanish language with the adoption of new words such as "tuitear" (to tweet) or googlear (to google). Linguist Silvia Ramirez Gelbes claims that language is alive; it is growing, changing, and adopting new words. The introduction of new words in a language is not anything new; for example, when planes were first created, the aeronautical world had to create new words. Gelbes also states that people (and not authorities) are the ones who decide which words are to be used. Moreover, she says that although we live in a "visual culture", emojis are not a threat to our language; they should be viewed as a complement. Finally, people write more, so we witness a multiplication of spelling mistakes, but new technologies don't have a negative impact on spelling.
Image Description | Photograph of a man holding a speech bubble with different symbols related to new technologies, and five Twitter links to other related infobae articles.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s), Twitter

Take a break from the election and read this story about emoji karaoke

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Newspaper | Los Angeles Times
Date | 8.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | A convention for emojis (Emojicon) taking place in a San Francisco mall attracts lots of emoji professionals and afficionados. There they learn about the Unicode Consortium - the non-profit organization that introduces new emojis. Everybody can submit an emoji design to Unicode but only 70 emojis are accepted per year. Unicode also never deletes an already existing emoji, so they have to keep the number of new entries low. The convention is full of fun activities, 'emoji karaoke' being one of them. A room full of people listen to songs and try to transcribe them with emojis in real time.
Image Description | Photograph of a woman in a peach emoji costume. People with emoji balloons. An emoji caricature artist.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), male(s)

Emoji is named as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 17.11.2015
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, word/writing
Summary | The "face with tears of joy" emoji was named word of the joy by the Oxford Dictionary. Emojis are symbols of today's culture and communication, and are replacing traditional forms of communication. There is nowadays a focus on visual communication. Emojis are a new form of communication that allow people to express their emotions, and to go beyond linguistic barriers.
Image Description | Digital image of the "face with tears of joy" emoji, and photograph of a man reading the Oxford Dictionary of English.
Image Tags | dictionary, emojis, male(s)

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