Abstract
Recent studies have found that people interpret emoji characters inconsistently, creating significant potential for miscommunication. However, this research examined emoji in isolation, without consideration of any surrounding text. Prior work has hypothesized that examining emoji in their natural textual contexts would substantially reduce the observed potential for miscommunication. To investigate this hypothesis, we carried out a controlled study with 2,482 participants who interpreted emoji both in isolation and in multiple textual contexts. After comparing the variability of emoji interpretation in each condition, we found that our results do not support the hypothesis in prior work: when emoji are interpreted in textual contexts, the potential for miscommunication appears to be roughly the same. We also identify directions for future research to better understand the interplay between emoji and textual context.
| Original language | English (US) |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2017 |
| Publisher | AAAI Press |
| Pages | 152-161 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781577357889 |
| State | Published - 2017 |
| Event | 11th International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2017 - Montreal, Canada Duration: May 15 2017 → May 18 2017 |
Publication series
| Name | Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2017 |
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Other
| Other | 11th International Conference on Web and Social Media, ICWSM 2017 |
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| Country/Territory | Canada |
| City | Montreal |
| Period | 5/15/17 → 5/18/17 |
Funding
We wish to thank the Amazon Mechanical Turk workers who made this study possible by providing us with interpretations. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 00039202. We would also like to thank our anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications