Number of Posts: 14
Posts 11 - 14
Secrets of the Emoji World, Now With Its Own Convention
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 7.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis
Summary | An obscure committee called Unicode Consortium made up of various representatives of leading technological companies world-wide has the ultimate power over which content gets turned into emojis and which does not. An emoji convention (Emojicon) is organized in San Francisco, decorated with emoji-shaped balloons, beach balls, bean bags, emoji foods, people dressed up as emojis, and with many expert speakers from academia, the corporate world, as well as artists and designers. Many of them are unhappy with such a small unrepresentative group of a few (likely) middle-aged, white men should decide on which emojis are available to everyone around the world. The Unicode Consortium has too much power over the global visual language.
Image Description | A hand reaching into a pile of emoji cut-outs. A person dressed as the peach emoji being interviewed. Two people in costumes taking a selfie.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), selfie
Married to Their Smartphones (Oh, and to Each Other, Too)
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
Branding the Smiley Face: Emoji as Corporate Tools
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
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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