Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 78
Posts 71 - 78

Married to Their Smartphones (Oh, and to Each Other, Too)

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.10.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | addiction, gender
Summary | Married couples increasingly report of marital disputes around smartphone use. Especially women feel devalued when their husbands give more attention to their smartphones rather than then. Marriage counsellors report that it is particularly problematic when spouses both use their smartphones in bed since it prevents emotional incimacy before going to sleep, as well as reducing the likelihood of physical intimacy.
Image Description | Illustration of a female and male smartphone on a marriage counselling couch.
Image Tags | emojis, smartphone, text

Emojis as art? Thumbs up from museum

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Newspaper | Los Angeles Times
Date | 26.10.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | Emojis have become part of most people’s everyday routine. The little images help users express feelings that they could never express like that in writing. They also help bridge the gap between face-to-face interaction and texting because linguists confirm that 70% of face-to-face communication depends on body language and other non-verbal cues. The MoMA in New York has recognized the significant impact that emojis have had on the world of design, marketing, and also art and are hosting an exhibit with the original set of emojis from 1999.
Image Description | “The original set of emoji, designed by Shigetaka Kurita, and released to Japanese cellphone users in 1999 — now acquired by MoMA. (Museum of Modern Art).”
Image Tags | emojis

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)

Teenage girls brand emojis SEXIST as the graphic icons only feature women having their nails done, at the hairdressers and being brides

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 3.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Summary | Emojis representing girls are very stereotypical; there are not enough options and the available options do no represent women and young girls. An "Always" ad asked young teenage girls what they thought of the available emojis, and they all said they would want to see girl emojis playing sports or working as lawyers or detectives. The set of emojis available now can send a wrong message to girls because they would only see stereotypes. They can also hamper girls' confidence during puberty.
Image Description | Series of screenshots of the video potraying teenage girls and the new emojis they would like to see. Interview (video) of the same teenage girls talking about how emojis represent girls.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), smartphone

What happens when your mother discovers emojis?

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 28.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Summary | The author of the article talks about her 70-year-old mother's use of emojis. Since she's had an iPhone, her mother has been using emojis a lot. Some news media have been covering the emoji phenomenon for a while now; they claim that emojis are like hieroglyphics, and that digital natives communicate using a special code, unfamiliar to adults. The author claims that we still use and need words, but emojis add more nuance and are straighforward.
Image Description | Photograph of a woman in a room full of emojis; she has a big 'smiling face with sunglasses emoji' on her head.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

:) them or :( them, emojis make our messages feel more like us

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 14.6.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | Some people are happy about the new 'emojify' feature that Apple offers, and some people don't like it and think that future generations won't be able to understand the English language. Famous cognitivist Stephen Pinker argues in favor of such communicative features; people adapt their language to the medium they use. If people text or tweet, it doesn't mean they won't be able to communicate in other ways; the same holds true for emojis. Emojis are useful to convey information that is hard to transmit via text (e.g. tone of voice, facial expressions). Having representative emojis (e.g. different skin colors) is also important since they help construct users' identity. Some people are not totally happy with the set of emojis offered now; they still convey certain ideologies and norms (e.g. about gender).
Image Description | Photograph of a woman in a room full of emojis; she has a big 'smiling face with sunglasses emoji' on her head.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s)

Branding the Smiley Face: Emoji as Corporate Tools

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.6.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, threat
Summary | Messenger designers are thinking about incorporating techniques to “emojify” one’s message. The keyboard would suggest appropriate emojis to replace certain words of the message. A central organization called Unicode, where all major smartphone companies have voting rights, decides on which new emojis will be added. This society is effectively deciding what is and what is not part of our visual language. The new emoji feature that Apple offers can hamper users' individual creativity and expression. By using the 'emojify' feature, we let big companies control people's ways to express themselves.
Image Description | Digital image of a collection of new emojis and photograph of an iPhone with a chat (with emojis) open.
Image Tags | emojis, smartphone

Group Weighs Expansion of the Emoji Vocabulary

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 26.10.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | The Unicode Consortium decides which emojis get developed and which do not. Representatives of the most important smartphone companies are members along with “language grammarians”. Still, Unicode’s president is very clear about emojis not being a language because complex ideas cannot be communicated free of ambiguity by using only emojis. Also, different cultures use emojis differently (example of the eggplant emoji meaning a phallus in the US).
Image Description | Digital image: collage of emojis.
Image Tags | emojis

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