ABSTRACT
Purpose: The authors explore how the sentiment expressed by emojis in comments on stocks is associated with the stocks' subsequent returns. Design/methodology/approach: By applying our own analyzer, the authors find a sentiment effect of emojis on stocks returns separately to the plain text-expressed sentiment in Reddit posts about meme stocks such as Gamestop during the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings: The authors document that a one-standard deviation change in emoji sentiment magnitude measured as the quantity of positive emoji sentiment posts over the previous hour is associated with an 0.06% (annualized: 109.2%) one-hour abnormal stock return compared to a mean of 0.03% (annualized: 54.6%). If the stock exhibits a higher intra-hour volatility, a proxy for uninformed noise trading, this relation is more pronounced and even stronger compared to stock return's relation to plain text sentiment. Research limitations/implications: The authors are not able to show causation that is open to future research. It also remains an open question how emojis impact market price efficiency. Practical implications: Emojis are positively related to stock returns in addition to plain text-expressed content if they are discussed heavily by retail investors in Internet boards such as Reddit. Social implications: Shared emotions expressed by emojis might have an influence on how disconnected individuals make homogeneous decisions. This argument might explain our found relation of emojis and stock returns. Originality/value: So, the study findings provide empirical evidence that emojis in Reddit posts convey information on future short-term stocks returns distinct from information expressed in plain text, in the case of volatile stocks, with a higher magnitude. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing guidelines has had a great impact on society. Emerging adults (ages 18-29) specifically are struggling as their need for social connection is critical to their mental health. However, the lack of nonverbal cues in electronically mediated communication (EMC) makes maintaining relationships online more difficult. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, our online communication has been advancing, so that some nonverbal cues, such as gestures and facial expressions, can be replicated in text conversations through emojis. Specifically, this study examined the role of emojis in providing emotional cues to reduce ambiguity, enhance positive affect, decrease negative affect, and increase feelings of social connectedness. Four separate ANCOVAs were conducted in order to explore the differences between emojis conditions (positive, negative, neutral, and no emojis) on the outcome variables while including current levels of psychological distress as a covariate. For each of the four models, there was at least one emoji condition that was statistically different than the others, suggesting that the inclusion of emojis had a significant impact on perceived ambiguity, changes in positive and negative affect, and feelings of connectedness. Additional pairwise t-tests demonstrated that the ambiguous text message was the clearest when it was accompanied by a positive emoji, when compared to both the negative and neutral emoji condition. The statements with a positive emoji, instead of no emoji, contributed to less of a decrease in positive affect. Additionally, the addition of each emoji had a unique impact on negative affect. Furthermore, positive emojis, when added to an ambiguous text message, contributed the most to feelings of connectedness when compared to the negative emoji, the neutral emoji, and no emoji conditions. Limitations and future directions are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Digitalization, affordable smart gadgets, and social distancing have turned virtual communication into a lived phenomenon. However, we should be aware of the fact that the virtual communication process is entangled with positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, it has enabled people to develop a feeling of togetherness and belonging, and on the other, it is steeped in conflict and dispute due to the extensive use of emojis that are context-sensitive and are subjected to multiple interpretations. The problem of emojis connected with sexual connotations has not been studied in an online conversation parameter. Hence, the current study examines the sexual connotations that are embedded in the usage of non-facial emojis such as eggplant, cherry, etc., in virtual communication and analyses sexual connotations that are generated in closed group interactions. The methodology undertaken in this study is a quantitative experimental research method to collect data. Participants (N=64) will determine how certain context-sensitive emojis are perceived by them in closed group online conversations. Results suggest that non-facial emojis possess sexual connotations which are highly context-specific and used extensively in interpersonal conversations. In this way, this paper will prepare the ground to study more hidden sexual connotations in emojis. © 2023 ACADEMY PUBLICATION.
ABSTRACT
Background: Emoticons and emojis have become staple additions to modern-day communication. These graphical icons are now embedded in daily society through the various forms of popular social media and through users' personal electronic conversations. With ever-increasing use and inclusivity, exploration of the possible health care and dermatology applications of these tools is imperative. Objective: The goal of this narrative review was to provide and evaluate an up-to-date literature survey examining the utility of emoticons and emojis in medicine. Special attention was paid to their existing and potential uses in the field of dermatology, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A PubMed search of peer-reviewed publications was performed in mid-2021 to collect articles with emoticon or emoji keywords in combination with other health care-relevant or dermatology-relevant keywords. Screening of publications and described studies was performed by the authors with education and research experience in health care, dermatology, social media, and electronic communication trends. Selected articles were grouped based on common subjects for qualitative analysis and presentation for in-depth discussion. Results: From this extensive search, researchers were able to identify a wide variety of publications detailing the use of emoticons and emojis in general health care, pediatric health care, public health, and dermatology. Key subject areas that emerged from the investigation included the ability of emoticons and emojis to improve communication within pediatric health care, enhance mood and psychological assessment or mental health screening in adults, develop interventions to improve patient medication adherence, complement novel means of public health and COVID-19 surveillance, and bolster dermatology-specific applications. Conclusions: This review illuminated the repurposing of emojis and emoticons for a myriad of advantageous functions in health care and public health, with applications studied in many populations and situations. Dermatology-specific uses were relatively sparse in the literature, highlighting potential opportunities for growth in future studies and practices. The importance of diversity and inclusivity has extended to emojis, with the recent introduction of skin color customization and new emojis better representing the comprehensive spectrum of users' experiences. A continuously evolving and technology-driven population creates a unique niche for emoticons and emojis to ease worldwide communication and understanding, transcending the barriers of age, language, and background. We encourage future studies and innovations to better understand and expand their utility.
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Romi Ron Morrison University of Southern California Morr052@usc.edu Loren Britton hello@lorenbritton.com Keywords practice, feel, mutual aid, scale, noticing, disability, notation, archive, ritual, computation, programmability, quilts, preparation, Black, measurability, materiality, relationship Ritual for Reading Be with this text on your computer, smartphone, tablet, piece of paper or whatever other device and pause for a moment. [...]for me I'm looking at a dialectic for how Blackness produces other types of technologies, not just those that are about capture and control, and The Negro Motorist Green Book as a site of cybernetic operation opens itself for there to be dialogue about trust, and emphasizes the face to face encounters of people making decisions together within a system that still circulates, and is about information flow. What's fascinating to me about the Green Book are the ways in which the information is sourced, compiled, and then circulated through Victor and Alma Green’s social relationships within the U.S. Postal Workers Union. By having postal workers literally walking their routes, engaging with neighbors, and having relationships with business owners, they would note safe places for Black people, send them to Victor and Alma Green who would compile them and circulate them back out as destinations in the Green Book.
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This study aims to examine whether and how user-generated comments and reaction emojis on COVID-19 vaccine-promoting Facebook posts induce psychological reactance to posts and vaccine hesitancy in audiences of the posts. An online experiment including 465 American adults showed that, compared with COVID-19 vaccine promotion posts accompanied by pro-vaccine comments, those accompanied by anti-vaccine comments provoked greater reactance in audiences through the mediating effects of bandwagon perception and the presumed influence of the posts on others. Greater reactance, in turn, increased audiences' COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, reaction emojis altered the comments' effects such that pro-vaccine comments triggered less reactance than anti-vaccine comments when the pro-vaccine comments were accompanied by agreement emojis (i.e., "like" and "love"); whereas there was no significant difference between pro-vaccine comments and anti-vaccine comments in reactance when the pro-vaccine comments were accompanied by rejection emojis (i.e., "angry" and "sad"). Furthermore, audiences' pre-existing attitudes did not affect the effects of opinion cues on their' reactance and vaccine hesitancy.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The online discussion around the COVID-19 pandemic is multifaceted, and it is important to examine the different ways by which online users express themselves. Since emojis are used as effective vehicles to convey ideas and sentiments, they can offer important insight into the public's gendered discourses about the pandemic. OBJECTIVE: This study aims at exploring how people of different genders (eg, men, women, and sex and gender minorities) are discussed in relation to COVID-19 through the study of Twitter emojis. METHODS: We collected over 50 million tweets referencing the hashtags #Covid-19 and #Covid19 for a period of more than 2 months in early 2020. Using a mixed method, we extracted three data sets containing tweets that reference men, women, and sexual and gender minorities, and we then analyzed emoji use along each gender category. We identified five major themes in our analysis including morbidity fears, health concerns, employment and financial issues, praise for frontline workers, and unique gendered emoji use. The top 600 emojis were manually classified based on their sentiment, indicating how positive, negative, or neutral each emoji is and studying their use frequencies. RESULTS: The findings indicate that the majority of emojis are overwhelmingly positive in nature along the different genders, but sexual and gender minorities, and to a lesser extent women, are discussed more negatively than men. There were also many differences alongside discourses of men, women, and gender minorities when certain topics were discussed, such as death, financial and employment matters, gratitude, and health care, and several unique gendered emojis were used to express specific issues like community support. CONCLUSIONS: Emoji research can shed light on the gendered impacts of COVID-19, offering researchers an important source of information on health crises as they happen in real time.