Karina Maldonado
Emoji’s as an Aid to Diminish Miscommunication
I conducted my research to answer the question whether All of my findings support my hypothesis People use graphical and contextual capabilities to communicate specific emotions (in non-ambiguous situations) in order to eliminate this chance of misunderstanding. And my Research Question How and why do people use graphical (emoji) and contextual capabilities to convey meaning and emotion through text? I found that for the most part people use emoji’s to replace face to face communication which helps to eliminate miscommunication.
I hypothesized that emoji/emoticons are used as an aid to help avoid miscommunication through text messages. I found this topic interesting because I am an emoji addict and for many of us they are part of our daily lives. Emoji’s have become a new form of communication; they not only are able to help express facial expressions but they also are able to evoke meaning all on their own without text. Not only did I find that emoji’s and emoticons are used to eliminate miscommunication I also found a pattern in gender usage of emoji’s and emoticons. For the most part men only send emoji to the opposite sex and women on the other hand send emoji to anyone. It was fascinating to see this theme occur within all of the research methods.
As for my research methods I used three different methods survey, interviews and focus group to aid me in testing my hypothesis. The criteria I used in selecting the candidates for the varies research method were smart phone owner, emoji/emoticon user and age ranging from 21-30. My focus group consisted of six classmates I believe it was the most helpful in finding useful data the reason being I think is it the participants really engaged with the questions and each other which created a great conversation. I also conducted four interviews with individuals that I knew were emoji fanatics my questions weren’t as strong as they could have been, but their responses were still helpful. As for the surveys I was able to collect 44 responses from my Facebook friends and friends of my friends. The questions used in the survey were focused more on emoji usage and reasoning of use this proved to be extremely helpful data. The survey was able to show me a clear picture of the usage of emoji’s.