emoticons and emojis in cross-cultural perspective - is muni

Bakalářská práce

JIŘÍ SVOBODA

Brno 2022

FAKULTA SOCIÁLNÍCH STUDIÍ

Emoticons and emojis in cross-cultural

perspective: Narrative systematic review

Vedoucí práce: Mgr. Lenka Dědková, Ph.D.

Katedra mediálních studií a žurnalistiky Program Mediální studia a žurnalistika

EMOTICONS AND EMOJIS IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: NARRATIVE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

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Bibliografický záznam

Autor: JiříSvobodaFakultasociálníchstudiíMasarykovauniverzitaKatedramediálníchstudiíažurnalistiky

Názevpráce: Emoticonsandemojisincross-culturalperspective:Narrativesystematicreview

Studijníprogram: Mediálnístudiaažurnalistika

Vedoucípráce: Mgr.LenkaDědková,Ph.D.

Rok: 2022

Početstran 68

Klíčováslova: emoji,emotikon,počítačověmediovanákomunikace,systematickápřehledovástať,mezikulturnírozdíly,nonverbálníkomunikace


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Bibliographic record

Author: JiříSvobodaFacultyofSocialStudiesMasarykUniversityDepartmentofMediaStudiesandJournalism

TitleofThesis: Emojiusageinculturalperspective–asystematicreview

DegreeProgramme:MediaStudiesandJournalism

Supervisor: Mgr.LenkaDědková,Ph.D.

Year: 2022

NumberofPages 68

Keywords: emoji,emoticon,computer-mediatedcommunication,systematicreview,cross-culturedifferences,nonverbalcommunication


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Anotace

Emojiaemotikonyjsouzásadnísoučástíkaždodennídigitálníkomuni-kaceavstupujíidointerakcímezilidmizrůznýchkultur.Tatobakalář-ská práce si proto klade za cíl prozkoumat tyto nonverbální komuni-kační atributy vjejichmezikulturní perspektivě. Využívá formy syste-maticképřehledové statědvaceti studií zlet 2006–2021, kterédohro-madyakumulujípoznatkyzmilionůpřípadůpoužitíemojiaemotikonů.Jejich syntéza ukazuje, že dosavadní vědecké, multidisciplinární po-znatkynaznačujírozdílyvevzorcíchužíváníemojiaemotikonmezide-sítkamikulturníchcelků.Zatímcoemotikonyjsouužívanéachápanévezřejmýchodlišnostechmezivýchodemazápadem,emojivykazujíznakyvětšímíryuniverzálníhoužívaní.


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Abstract

Emojisandemoticonsareessential ineverydaydigitalcommunicationandenterintointeractionsbetweenpeoplefromdifferentcultures.Thisbachelorthesisaimstoexplorethesenonverbalcommunicationattrib-utesintheircross-culturalperspective.Itusestheformofasystematicreviewof twentystudies from2006-2021,which togetheraccumulatefindingsfrommillionsofcasesofemojiandemoticonuse.Theirsynthe-sisshowsthatexistingscholarly,multidisciplinaryfindingssuggestdif-ferencesinpatternsofemojiandemoticonuseacrossdozensofculturalunits.Whileemoticonsareusedandunderstood indistinctlydifferentwaysbetweenEastandWest,emojishowsignsofagreaterdegreeofuniversaluse.


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Declaration

Prohlašuji, že jsembakalářskouprácina témaEmoticonsandemojisincross-culturalperspective:Narrativesystematicreviewzpraco-val sám. Veškeré prameny azdroje informací, které jsem použilksepsání této práce, byly citovány v textu ajsou uvedeny vseznamupoužitýchpramenůaliteratury.

BrnoJanuary 1, 2022 ....................................... JiříSvoboda


Šablona DP 3.2.2-FSS-anglicky (2021-04-29) © 2014, 2016, 2018–2021 Masarykova univerzita 9

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Lenka Dědková for her patience,months ofcollaboration,andhundredsofinsightfulcommentsonearlierversionsofthisthesis.IwouldalsoliketothankDr.MichalTkaczykfortheop-portunity to prepare for this thesis in the Introduction to SystematicLiteratureReviewcourse.Lastbutnotleast,immensegratitudegoestomyfamilyandfriends,whoformorethanayearhavetoleratedmycon-stantneedtosharefunfactsaboutemojisandemoticonsandhavein-spiredmetowritevariouspartsofthisthesis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Table of Contents

ListofFigures 13ListofTables 141 Introduction 152 Emoticonsandemojis 172.1 DEFINITIONS 172.2 HISTORYOFEMOTICONSANDEMOJI 18

3 Theoriesrelatedtoemoticonsandemojis 233.1 MEDIAANDCOMMUNICATIONTHEORIES 233.2 SOCIALANDPSYCHOLOGICALTHEORIES 243.3 CROSS-CULTURALTHEORIES 26

4 Emoticonandemojiasaresearchsubject 304.1 CULTURALPREDICTORSOFEMOJIANDEMOTICONS 314.2 INDIVIDUALPREDICTORSOFEMOJIANDEMOTICONS 334.3 EMOJIASANOBJECTIVERESEARCHTOOL 354.4 RESEARCHQUESTION 35

5 Method 376 Results 426.1 EMOTICONSINCULTURALPERSPECTIVE 426.2 EMOJISINCULTURALPERSPECTIVE 446.3 USEDTHEORETICALFRAMEWORKS 466.4 OTHEROBSERVATIONS 47

7 Discussion 488 Conclusion 52Bibliography 54AppendixA Researchtable 65

LIST OF FIGURES

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List of Figures

Figure1:Lepointd'amour,asproposedbyHervéBazin(p.19)Figure2:Flowdiagramofthesystematicreview(p.39)

LIST OF TABLES

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List of Tables

Table1:Breakdownofnumbersofrecordsfoundbydatabase(p.38Table2:Keyemoticonfindings(p.43)Table3:Keyemojifindings(p.45)

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1 Introduction

Emoticonsandemojispossesssubstantialpartsoftoday’sinterpersonalcomputer-mediated communication (CMC). Billions (Evans 2017) aresent, viewed, and somehow interpreted daily by people worldwide.Sincethe1980s,whentheyfirstbecamepresentindigitaltextualcom-munication, emoticons and emojis largely impacted the internet andcommunicationservices–uptothepointwhenhalfofallcommentsonInstagramincludedanemoji(Instagram,2015).Suchwidespreadusageoftheseenrichingaspectsoftextualcommuni-cation naturally generated interest among scholars. Up to October2021,at leasthundredsofstudiestriedtoexamineemojis’andemoti-cons’design,functions,effects,orinterpretationsbydifferentgroupsofusers. For example, while😏 seems to be an innocent emoji at firstglance,Thomson(2018)foundoutthatupto34%ofrespondersuseitin a sexual context. Another example would be the👋 emoji used inAmericanEnglishtosignal“goodbye.” InBritishEnglish, it isoftenas-sociatedwithtravelingandutilizedtogetherwithemojisofflags(Barb-ierietal.,2016a).Partoftheresearchonemoticonsandemojisisfocusedondifferencesin theirusagebetweenbiggersocialgroups,suchasnations,speakersofaparticularlanguage,orculture.Whilethedesignofemoticonstend-ed to be culturally dependent from the very beginning (see chapter2.2.), emojis, on the other hand, are unified. However, that does notmeanthatall thepeopleworldwidewoulduse themin thesameway.Forinstance,onestudyfoundsubstantialdifferencesinusageofemojisbetweenwesternandeasterncultures(Guntukuetal.,2019).Still,vari-ationshavebeenfoundbetweenindividualcountries(SwiftKey,2015)orevencitieswithinonecountry(Barbierietal.,2016b).Somestudiesalsolinkedemojisandemoticonusagewithcross-culturalindexes(Hall1960,Hofstede2011).Forexample,usersinindividualisticculturesareexpected to express their emotions more than users in collectivisticcultures (Nisbett&Masuda, 2003), hence alsohaving thepotential tousemoreemojisandemoticonsingeneral,astheyareusedgenerallytoexpresssomekindofemotion.

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Associety isbecomingmoreglobalized,digitalcommunication ishap-peningmore frequentlybetweenmembersofdifferentcultures.Whilethelanguagebarrieristhemainprobleminsuchcases,nonverbalsignsalso play a substantial role like in any other form of communication,and they toocanbeculture-dependent. In thosecases,diverseunder-standingsofemojisandemoticonscanresultinmisunderstandingsbut,ontheotherhand,canunitetheusersifthemeaningofagivenemojiisthesamebetweencultures(seeMeyer,2014).Examiningtheusageofemoticons and emojis thus represents a great opportunity to learnmore about the cultural differences (or lack thereof) in interpersonalcommunicationpatterns.Sincetheseaspectsarewidelyspreaddigital-ly,thereisalsoalotofobjectivedataavailable,suchasfromsocialme-dia.Therefore, thisthesisexploresculturaldifferences inCMC,relatedexplicitlytoemoticonandemojiusage.Digitalcommunicationis,bydefault,amultidisciplinaryacademicfield(Šmahel & Černíková, 2019). As research of emojis and emoticons ispart of it, underlying theories and critical findings come frommediastudies, psychology, sociology, linguistics, informatics, human-computer interaction, and in the case of my focus, also from cross-cultural studies. A large scope of fundaments possibly contributed tothefactthatlittleefforthasbeenmadetosynthesizefindingsinemojiand emoticon research. To the best of my knowledge, no action hasbeentakentosynthesizetheirfindingsinculturalcontexts.Sohowex-actlydoemoticonsandemojisusagedifferbetweencultures?Canvaria-tionsintermsoffrequency,interpretation,orcontextbeobserved?Andifso,canthesevariationsbeattributedtosomeknownculturalspecif-ics?Thisthesistriestoanswerthesequestionsviaasystematicreviewof studies that examined differences in usage patterns of emojis andemoticonsincultures,nations,orregionsoftheworld.

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2 Emoticons and emojis

2.1 Definitions

This thesisdealsmainlywith twoaspectsofcomputer-mediatedcom-munication(CMC)–emoticonsandemojis.Firstly,anemoticon(plural:emoticons) is “animagemadeupofsymbolssuchaspunctuationmarks,used intextmessages,emails, etc. toexpressaparticularemotion” (Cam-bridgeDictionary,2021b).Inotherwords,theyareproduced,invented,and alteredmainly by the users themselves by synthesis of differentcharacters.Examplesinclude:-),:(,-_-or¯\_(ツ)_/¯,andasthefollow-ingchapterwill show,usersdevelopeddistinctive stylesof emoticonsovertheyears.Emoticonsarepresentintoday’sCMCbutnotprevalent.AccordingtoMcCulloch(2020,p.268),theemoji“facewithtearsofjoy”😂 replaced the most popular emoticon :) in usage levels already in2015.Secondly, an emoji (plural: emoji or emojis) is “adigital image that isadded to a message in electronic communication in order to express aparticularideaorfeeling”(CambridgeDictionary2021a).Amongexam-plesare😂,🤡,🚗,🔥or🏋.Asopposedtoemoticons,theybecamepop-ular later (see chapter 2.2.) and, on a technical level, are encoded inCMCasindividualcharacters(sameasڨ, @, ý or 韓),notasetofthem.Theemojisystem1 isalsostandardizedbyUnicodeConsortium,whichmaintainstheUnicode– thenormthatensureseverycharacter isdis-playedandunderstoodsimilarlyacrossdevices,nomatter theoperat-ingsystemorfont.Thesignificanceofemojis intoday’sdigitalcommunicationcanhardlybeoverstated.However,theexactusagescaleishardtomeasuresinceemojisarenowintegralpartsofalmostalldigitalcommunicationtools,including work-related ones (see Slack.com, Café (app.at.cafe), etc.).Alreadybackin2015,Instagramrevealedthatoverhalfofallthecom-ments on the platform contained an emoji (Instagram, 2015). Evans

1Fromalanguageperspective,awordemojicaneitherdescribetheindividualsymbol

orthesystemofemojiasawhole

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(2017)wrotethatpeoplesendover6billionemojisdaily.Still,thesameyearMessenger,aservicebyMeta,revealedthatusersonlyonthisplat-formuse over 5 billion emojis a day (FacebookMessenger, 2017), sotoday, the total number may be even higher. To the best of myknowledge,therearenosuchstatisticsfortheusageofemoticons.Thiscanbeattributed to theendlessnumberof emoticonvarieties (asop-posedtounifiedemojis),hencetheirtrackingismorecomplicated.

2.2 History of emoticons and emoji

A crucial reason for using emoticons and emojis is that text-basedcommunication can be seen as limiting aswordsmay not convey thedesiredmeaning properly (Holtgraves & Robinson, 2020). Although Iwill focussolelyoncomputer-mediatedcommunication inmysystem-aticreview,suchlimitationsoftext-basedcommunicationapplytooth-ermedia(e.g.,printmedia,letters).People,therefore,cameupwithvar-iousproposalstosolvethisissue.For example, HenryDenham, a 16th century English printer, came upwith؟–asymbolhecalled“apercontationpoint”tosignifyrhetoricalquestions.A17th-centuryEnglishphilosopher,JohnWilkins,proposedaspecificpunctuationmarktoindicateirony.Thesymbolhechosewas¡,today’supside-downexclamationpoint.Later,aFrenchnovelistHer-vé Bazin invented five different punctuationmarks for various situa-tions, including one visually close to today’s emoticons. “Le pointd’amour”(seeFigure1)consistedoftwoopposingquestionmarkswitha commonpoint under them andwas supposed to signify love (Sear-geant,2019).Therefore,Bazin’sinventionisessentiallyahistoricalver-sionof today’s❤or<3.Hence,CMCwasnot the first channel tohavesuchnonverbal aspects that specify themeaningof a given text, eventhoughthemassiveusageofemoticonsandemojiscanhardlybecom-paredtopreviousefforts.

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Figure1:Lepointd'amour,asproposedbyHervéBazinTheneedtoconveynewdimensionsofmeaningremainedpresenteveninthedigitalera,withemoticons.Thereisaconsensus(seeSeargeant,2019orMcCulloch,2020)thattheirbeginningscanbetracedtoCarne-gie Mellon University (CMU) computer messaging system in 1982.Mainly its content consisted of serious announcements from campus,but some students started posting jokes. A professor named ScottFahlmanthenwrotethefollowingsequence(CarnegieMellonUniversi-ty,1982): 19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke mar-kers: :-) Read it sideways. It is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(

Thismessageismostlikelythefirstinstanceinwhichanemoticonwasused.Otherparticipantssoonfollowed,creatingtheiremoticons,tooassomeofthemessagesshow(CarnegieMellonUniversity,1982): (:-) for messages dealing with bicycle helmets @= for messages dealing with nuclear war <:-) for dumb questions

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oo for somebody’s headlights are on messages o>-<|= for messages of interest to women ~= a candle to annotate flaming messages

TheemoticonsdevelopedatCMUsharestandardfeatures:mainly,thefacesrotatedsidewaysand,inthebeginning,symbolsrepresentingeyesand noses remained unchanged, whereas mouths and other add-onsvarieddependingonthedesiredmeaning.Thisstyledirectlycontrastswithemoticonsdevelopedaroundthesametime in Japan, calledkaomoji(顔文字, literally “face characters”). It isunknown who used them first, but they became popular in the late1980sonASCIINet,aJapaneseonlineservice(Y-N,2017).Tothisday,they are horizontal andproject thedesired emotionmostly into sym-bolsfortheeyes,whilethemouthremainsunchanged.Someexamplesinclude(^.^)forlaughingor(__)forapologizing.Thetwostylesbecameknownaseasternandwesternamongscholars.Theyareconsistentwithpsychologicalresearch(Yukietal.,2007)thatsuggestedwesternersaremorefocusedonthemouth,whileeasternerson eyes while reading emotions. In some instances, kaomoji becamepopularamongEnglish-speakingaudiences(McCullouch,2020,p.263),such as with “flip the table” (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ or “shrugging.”¯\_(ツ)_/¯.The very first systemof emojiwas also invented in Japan in 1997bySoftBank,amongothers,acellphonecarrierthatreleasedaphonewith90 black-and-white emojis encoded the sameway as text characters.Theyincludedpets,time,varioussymbols,butnotmanyfaces.SoftbankwasalsothefirsttoincludeemojithatisnownotoriouslyknownintheUnicode as “pile of poo”💩. Other Japanese carrier Docomo followedaftertwoyearswiththeirownsetofemojis (Burge,2017).Atthattime,emojiswerepurelyamatterofindividualphonecarriers,so itwas impossible to use them in communicationbetweenusers ofdifferent ones. Firstly, the Unicode Consortium, which takes care ofUnicodetechnicalstandards,declinedtoincludeemojisamonguniver-sally coded characters in the early 2000s.However, as the charactersremainedpopularandglobaltechnologyfirmswantedtoexpandtoJa-

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pan (for example, Apple wanted Japanese users to buy iPhones), in2010, the first set of emojiswas incorporated as part of Unicode 6.0.(McCulloch, 2020, p. 267; Davis & Holbrook, 2021) A year later, in2011,Applewasthefirstcompanytoincludeemojisintheirkeyboardon the iOSoperational system. (Apple Inc.,2011)and in2013,GooglefollowedwithsupportonAndroid(Android,2013).Emojis gained tractionover the years, and in2015 several significanteventsoccurredthatseemedtopushtheminto themainstream.First,emojisweresupported inevery internetbrowser (Evans,2017,p.11).Secondly,asselectedbyOxfordDictionaries,thewordoftheyearwas😂“facewithtearsofjoy.”Jurorsarguedthatthisveryemojiwasglobal-lythemostused in2015andhadseenasharprise fromthepreviousyear.Theyalsoobservedthesametrendwiththewordemojiitself(Ox-fordLanguages,2015).Several social phenomena can explain the rise of emojis. McCulloch(2020, p. 270) argued that they strike amedium between emoticonsthatcanbeseenastoosimplisticandGIFsthataretoocomplex.Evans(2017, p. 22) attributes it to the global adoptionof both socialmediaandsmartphones,whichsawasharpriseinthe2010s,assmartphonekeyboardswereamongthefirsttoolsglobalizedforemojis.In2018,itwasestimatedthatmorethan5billionpeopleworldwidehadamobilephone,withoverhalfof thembeingsmartphones(Silver,2019).Simi-larly,forexample,servicesbyMeta(formerlyFacebook)whichallsup-port emojis, are used today bymore than 3 billion people who sendover100billionmessageseveryday(Meta,2021).Emojisalsoenteredactuallifeevents,suchaswhenin2016,a12-year-oldinVirginia,US,wasfacedwiththreateningchargesforusing🔫🔪💣sequenceonline2 (TheWashingtonPost,2016).Since then, therehavebeenmore essential landmarks in emoji adoption, as summarized byEmojitimeline.com (Hånberg Alonso, 2021). Every year, the UnicodeConsortiumreleasesanewsetofemojis, themost recentbeingEmoji14.0,whichbringsthetotalnumberofemojisintheUnicodeStandard

2Atthetime,thepistolemoji🔫 lookedlikeanactualrevolver,notawaterpistol.

Appleintroducedthechangelaterin2016andotherplatformssoonfollowed.

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to3,633(EmojipediaFAQ,2021).Somestill causecontroversies, suchastherecentlyrevealedemojiofapregnantman(MurphyKelly,2021).Interestingly,members of some nations think that today’s emojis arenotsufficientforsomeculturallydependentcommunication.Therefore,Sadiq and Shahida (2019) reactedby presenting Pakistani emoji. Fin-landalsoclaimstobethefirstcountrytodesignitsnationalemoji, in-cludingaflagofÅlandislands,Nokiaphone,orauroraborealis(ThisisFinland,2019).Noneofthem,however,areavailableinUnicode.

Therefore,thedevelopmentofemojisandemoticonsinCMC(fromthe1980s) shows consistentdemand for them.Over time, emojisbecamecommonbeyondpurelymessagingplatformsandarealmostomnipres-entinourdailylives.Asthefollowingchapterswillshow,suchdemandalso sparked interest among researchers frommedia, communication,psychology,orcross-culturalstudies.

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3 Theories related to emoticons and emojis

Beforeaskingspecificquestionsaboutculturaldifferencesinemoticonsand emojis, we have to see why they are used so widely in the firstplace.Theemoticonandemojiresearchthathasbeenconductedsofaris mostly interdisciplinary, hence it is based on many theories andmodels from fields of media, linguistics, communication, psychology,and cultural studies. This chapter seeks to briefly introduce themostrelevantonesformythesis.

3.1 Media and communication theories

SeveralmassmediaandcommunicationtheoriesareusedinCMCandemoticon and emojis research. For instance, Daft and Lengel (1986)cameupwiththemediarichnesstheory.Initsbasics,itsaystherichestformofcommunicationisface-to-facebecauseithasthelargestnumberofnon-verbalcues;itisnotmediatedbutinstantandallowspersonali-zation.Ontheotherhand,purelytextualCMCis,inthisframework,lessrich because people depend purely onwords, without any nonverbalcues,andcommunicateinanasynchronousandmediatedenvironment.EmojisandemoticonscanbethereforeseenasaspectsthatenrichCMC.Whilehighly influential in its time,Daft’sandLengel’s theoryhasalsobeencriticized.Because itwasdevelopedat theearlyageofCMCandmainlyappliedtomassmedia,itcanhardlycapturethespecificsofto-day’s, forexample,socialmedia thatare interactiveandprovidemoreinformation about each communicator thanpure textualmessageonesends.Walther(2011)arguedthatmediarichnesstheorydoesnotap-plytomediathatallowawidevarietyofusage. Inotherwords,Daft’sandLengel’sapproachdoesnotconsiderthepersonalfactorsofpartici-pantsinCMCandfocusesonobjectivefactsofamedium.Furthertheories,therefore,consideredsuchindividualfactors.Walther(1992)cameupwiththesocialinformationprocessingtheory.Itseesapersonreceivingamessageasanactiveelementinthecommunicationprocesswhocandecodethemeaningsenderintended.Thiscanbedonewithcueslikegrammar,punctuation,sentenceconjugation,emoticons,andemojis.However,thetheorypresumesthatthecommunicatorswill

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decodethecuestheintendedway,whereasnumerousstudiesshowedinterpersonaldifferenceswithinterpretingsomeemoji(seechapter4).Inthefollowingwork,Walther(1996)proposedahyperpersonalcom-munication theory that tried to solve the question ofwhy people canform online relationships despite less rich media. He claims that theonlineenvironmentcanleadtoevencloserrelationships(hencehyper-personal) than face-to-face communication in some cases. That is be-causesenderscanselectivelydisplaythemselvesandshowonlylikablepartsoftheirpersonalities.Anothercontributingfactorismostlyasyn-chronousnatureofCMC,which allows senders to edit theirmessagesmore.Asaresult,moreidealizedrelationshipsarecreatedthatareper-ceivedascloserdespitelessinformationexchanged.In otherwords,Walther’s theories (which he primarily supported byexperiments) showed that the meanings of CMC messages are lessstraightforward than face-to-face communication. He later translatedthis notion into his experiment regarding emoticons (Walther &D’addario2001),whichconcludedthatwhile:-)emoticonincreasestheperceivedpositivityofapositivemessage,thefrownyemoticon:-(doesnothave adirectly opposing effect.While it (as expected) lessens thepositivityofatextuallypositivemessage,itdoesnotincreasethenega-tivityofanegativemessage.Thisresultsuggeststhatemotionsproject-edintoemoticonsdonothavetheprecisesameeffectascorrespondinghumanexpressions.However,mediaandcommunicationtheoriesaloneare not sufficient in emoji and emoticon research as the usage alsotouchesdifferentindividualandculturalaspects.

3.2 Social and psychological theories

AccordingtoHabermas(1984),asagoal-drivenbehavior,humancom-munication can serve to understand two people better or create andmaintain relationships.Consideringemojisandemoticonsasapartofcommunicationprocesses,TangandHew(2019)identifiedseveralthe-oriesandmodelsinothersocialsciencesappliedinpreviousemojiandemoticonresearch.

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Firstly, uncertainty reduction theory (Berger&Bradac 1982) is oftenusedinstudiesfocusingontheunderstandingandmeaningofmessag-es, including emoticons/emojis in interpersonal communication. Itshows that CMC users actively seek cues about a person from theirmessagesandpredicttheirbehaviorsandattitudes–emojisandemoti-consaresuchcues, too.Whenappliedtoemailcommunication,Byronand Baldridge (2007) found that senders are perceived more likablewhen using emoticons. Thus, emoticons and emojis add an essentiallevel of information to themessage that the receiver uses to form animpressionofthesender.Secondly, the intimacymodel is presented by Tang and Hew (2019).Like Byron’s and Baldridge’s (2007) findings, several studies linkedhigher intimacy levels to theusageofemojisandemoticons.Researchhas shown that when one describes their emotions in any way, itstronglyimpactsperceivedintimacy(Laurenceauetal.,1998).Asemot-icons and emojis are also used to show emotions, as another studyproved(Janssenetal.,2014),theyalonealsoimpactintimacybetweenCMC users. Hence, emoticons and emojis can function both as a toolleading to forming closer relationships and as an external expressionthattherelationshipbetweenthecommunicatorsisclose.Thirdly, in linewithWalther’sandD’addario’sresearch(2001),whichproved the disparity between expressing positive and negative emo-tions, others linked politeness theory (Brown & Leviso, 1987) withemoticonresearch.Theideasayseverypersonwantstoshowthebet-tersideof theirpersonalityand“avoid threateninganother’sperson’sface”(Tang&Hew2014).Asonestudyproved(Skovholtetal.,2014),sendersuseemoticonstolightenthetoneofrequestsordirectives.Importantlytothisthesis,TangandHew(2014)alsomentionedprevi-ous researchers exploring how people used emojis differently acrosscultures and pointed out that more “culturally situated research isneeded”onemojis,emoticons,andstickers.Thefollowingchapterswillshowthatsuchresearchhasbeenconductedsince2014.Asemoticonsandemojisweresubjecttoculturaldifferencesfromthebeginning, they can also be parts of social norms, either in smallergroupsoronanationalandculturallevel.

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3.3 Cross-cultural theories

As chapter 2.2. addressed, emoticons were from the very beginningsubject toculturaldifferencesdue todifferentdesigns.This factaloneposes a foundation for further analysis of how emoticons and emojisareusedinotherpartsoftheworld,nomattertheinfluenceofindivid-ual and psychological factors of senders and receivers. This chapterseekstointroducethemainconceptsontheintersectionofculturalandemoticon/emojistudies.Culturalstudieshaverootsinsocialsciences,politicaleconomy,orphi-losophy. Thinkers from various fields noticed that people in differentregionshavedifferentthinking,working,andcommunicatingstyles.Forexample,psychologistRichardE.Nisbett(2004)concludedthatAsiansandwesterners“havemaintainedverydifferentsystemsofthoughtforthousandsofyears”(p.16).Othershavetriedtoquantifyandmeasurethesedifferencesanddevel-opedmodelsthatcomparepeople’sbehaviorindifferentcultures.Oneofthefirstattemptsintheserespectswasconductedbyanthropologistandcross-cultural researcherEdwardT.Hall3. Inhiswork,hedividedcultures intoacontinuumbetweenhigh-context (HC)and low-context(LC) based on how implicitly or explicitly information is transmittedbetween senders. In otherwords, he examined if every necessary in-formationisincludedinanexchange(LC),orinsteaditsmemberscountwith an individual having some prior context (HC). Some typical HCculturesareChinaorKorea;LCcultureistheUSAorGermany.Bothverbalandnon-verbalcommunicationinHCculturestypicallyin-cludes a lot of hiddenmeanings and subtle signs that are not under-standable for people outside such cultures. These cultures, therefore,tendtobemorehomogenous.Ontheotherhand,communicationinLCculturesrefrainsfromsubtlemeaningsorhiddensignsandtendstobeexplicitanddirect. Inotherwords, suchcommunication isusuallyun-

3(1914-2009).DonotconfusewithasociologistStuartHall(1932-2014)

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derstandable even foroutsiders and canbeobserved inmorehetero-genouscultures,cities,orcountries(Hall,1960,1989).Thisconcepthasbeenusedinnumerousfields,eveninCMC:forexam-ple,ElizabethWürtz(2005)performedacross-culturalanalysisofweb-sites from HC and LC cultures using Hall’s model, and Park and ElMimouni(2020)appliedittostudyofemoticonsinArabic,English,andKoreantweets.ItisnottheonlydimensionthatHallhasusedtoevalu-ateculture.Healsoobserveda.)differencesinproxemics,i.e.,studiesofhowcloselypeoplearestandingtoeachother inpersonalorbusinessencountersandb.)differencesinperceptionoftime: insomecultures,people workwith relaxed schedules, whereas in some, they are verypunctual.Inanotherattempt,DutchsocialpsychologistGeertHofstedeconstruct-edamorecomplextheoryofculturaldimensions.Themostrecentver-sionof themodel (Hofstede,2010)contains sixdimensionsof cultureevaluation:1.)powerdistance(meaningthehigheritis,themoreestab-lishedhierarchy;lowermeanspeoplearequestioningtheauthority),2.)individualismvs.collectivism (howmuch integratedaregroups ineachculture,howmuchis“I”or“We”emphasized),3.)uncertaintyavoidance(how much are people prone to new, unsure things; the higher thescore,themoretheyrelyonabsolutetruths,laws,guidelines),4.)mas-culinityvs. femininity(masculinityaspreferencetoachievement,hero-ism,success; femininityaspreferenceofcooperation,modesty,caring,quality of life), 5) short-term vs. long-term orientation (short: orienta-tiontopast,traditions,personalsteadiness;long:orientationtofuture,adaptation, investment) and 6.) indulgence vs. restraint (indulgence:orientation to freedom, human desires, enjoying life, positivity; re-straint:control,regulation,strictsocialnorms)(Hofstede,2011).Hofstedefirstlydevelopedthetheoryaspartofhisresearchofvaluesof117,000employeesof IBMcompany in the1960sand1970s, from66countries,butlaterstudiesinnumeroussettingsfollowed(forexample,Hofstede1993,1994;Minkov,2007;Mouritzen&Svara,2002).However,aswidelyasHofstede’smodelhasbeenused,ithasalsobeensubstantially criticized. The most cited critique is made by BrendanMcSweeney(2002).Hepointsoutthenumberofmethodologicalflaws

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present since the original research in IBM. For example, there werefewer than 50 participants in some of the countries.McSweeney alsocriticizedthatHofstedeendorsesstrongnationalculturaldeterminismand implies that culture is universally shared in a nation or rather astate.Also,theveryfactthatHofstedeworksonlywithnationsandnoother cultural units is criticized. For example, the model sees GreatBritainasaunifiedculture,eventhoughitconsistsoffouruniquecoun-tries.Hofstederepliedtothecritique(2002).Whileheacknowledgednationsarenotthebestunitstostudycultures,heclaimstheyare“usuallytheonlykindofunitsavailableforcomparisonand(are)betterthannoth-ing.”Healsodefendedtheuseofsubsidiariesofonecompany(IBM)asproxies for national cultures. He argued that the similarity of groupsbetweenculturesisessentialandarguedthatthemodelwasvalidatedeveninthecaseofdataobtainedfromrepresentativesamplesofentirenationalpopulations.Althoughcriticized,though,Hofstede’smodelisstillused.Tothebestofmyknowledge,contemporarycross-culturalstudiesdonothavesimilarandwidelycitedframeworkstoevaluateculturaldifferences.Themostsignificant limitationof themodel seems tobe that ithasbeendevel-oped in theworkenvironment and tries todescribe fundamental cul-tural differences.The very sameapproachwas repeated laterbyErinMeyer (2014),whohas a background in business studies aswell andcame up with eight dimensions that incorporate both parts of Hof-stede’sandHall’smodels.Moreover,Hofstede’smodelisalsousedwidelyinCMC.Relatedtothetopics of this thesis, a group of Chinese researchers (Lu et al., 2016)usedHofstede’smodel tocompareemojiusage in212countries.Theyfound, for example, that users from strong-individualism index coun-tries are more likely to express positive emotions through positiveemojisthannegativitythroughnegativeemojis,orthat“usersfromhighuncertainty-avoidancecountriesarelesslikelytoexpresspositiveemo-tion”(p.778).Especially the correlation between the emoji usage and position of agivencountryonanindividual-collectivismcontinuumcanbeexpected

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inlarge.NisbetandMasude(2003)pointedoutthatpeopleinindividu-alisticandcollectivisticculturesdifferincommunication.Inindividual-isticcountries, individualsareusuallypushedtoexpresstheir feelingsexplicitly. On the other hand, individual communication is more dis-creet and indirect in collectivistic cultures. Therefore, one can expectmoreemojisandemoticonsusedinindividualisticcountries.In general, emoji and emoticon research have a strong foundation inmediaandcommunicationtheories,anditseffectscanbeevaluatedbyseveral theories fromother social sciences.Research in thecontextofcross-culturalstudiesisalsopresentbutinherentlylimitedbytherela-tiveunderdevelopmentofthefieldinthecontextofCMC.Thefollowingsystematicreviewwillalsoexamine if researchersuseanyof thepre-sented cultural models to explain differences in emoji and emoticonusage.

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4 Emoticon and emoji as a research subject

Emojisandemoticonshaveraisedsubstantialinterestamongresearch-ersandarevibrantresearchtopics.AsofSeptember2021,accordingtoWebofScience(WoS),over2,120academicworkscontainedemojisoremoticons in their title (WebofScience,2021).GoogleScholar searchshows454paperswithemojioremoticonintheirabstractortitle,justin the past year (Google Scholar, 2021). In general, most papers onemojisandemoticonsarefromthe2010sorlater,eventhoughemoti-conshavebeenaroundfordecades.Thismayalsoexplainwhyresearchon emoticons seems to be relatively underdeveloped, as opposed toemojis.Someofthepreviousresearchonemojisandemoticonsiscomplicatedby terminology issues, asTang andHew (2019)pointedout. There iswidespread confusion between the terms emoticon and emoji. Somescholarsuseemoticonsforalltypesofnonverbalcues,includingemojis,even though theyare technicallydifferent.Thismaybecausedby thesimilarityofbothwordsor the fact thatsomeplatformsautomaticallyconvert emoticons such as :-) toJ. Some researchers also combineevaluationsofemoticonsandemojis.Todate, therehavebeen twosystematic reviewsregardingemojiandemoticonresearch.TangandHew(2019)tookacoherentapproachandsystematically reviewed51 studiesonemoticons, emojis, and stickers(together dubbed as graphicons) conducted between 1996 and 2017,using qualitative analysis. Their conclusions were summarized intothreecategories:1.)whydopeopleuse thesegraphicons,2.)howaretheyused,3.)andwhatistheirimpact.Aspartofthefirstcategory,theyfoundthatallgraphiconsareusedtoexpressemotions,forenjoyment,fun, and social purposes, to substitute textual expression, but also toavoidmisunderstanding. In linewith that notion, the study also con-cluded that people tend to use understandable emoticons in positivecontexts.Italsofoundthatfemalestendtousemoreemoticonsinfre-quency,butmalesuseamoreexpansiverangeofthem.Ingeneral,thestudyalsofoundoutthat,whilegraphiconsimpacthowthemessageorthe sender’spersonality isperceived, in situationswhen the text con-flictswithgraphicons,thenonverbalcuesdonotoverridethemeaning

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ofthetextitself.Theauthorsalsopointedouttofourliteraturereviewson emoticons (Aldunate & González-Ibáñez, 2017; Derks et al., 2008,Dunlap et al., 2016; Jibril &Abdullah, 2013). None of them, however,weresystematicintheirsearches.ThesecondsystematicreviewwasconductedbyBaietal.(2019).Theystate that “in recent years, emoji have becomea hot topic for research,withthevolumeofpapersincreasinggraduallyfrom2015andpeakingat2017-2019.”Intotal, theyincluded167articlesfromjournalsandcon-ferences,butthereviewprovidesonlyageneraloverview,withoutanymainsynthesisandconclusions.Thestudyexploredthedevelopmentofemojis,theiruse,andtheirfunctionsonthepersonal,platform,andcul-turallevels.

4.1 Cultural predictors of emoji and emoticons

Bothreviewsmentionedabove(Baietal.,2019;Tang&Hew2019)in-cludepartswherestudiesexploringemojisandemoticonsfromacross-cultural perspective are briefly summarized. This fact further provesthe relevance of the topic of this thesis. Previous research examineddifferences in several cultural cohorts: large regions (such as east vs.west),languages,countries,orculturalgroupswithinonecountry.Spe-cifically, the researchers observed differences in emoticon and emojitypes,theirfrequencyofusage,andinterpretation.

4.1.1 East vs. West differences

The research regarding differences in emoji and emoticon usage be-tween east and west regions comes from the historical notion thatemoticonsdesignhasseparatetraditions(seechapter2.2.).Forexam-ple,Parketal.(2014)conductedaglobalanalysisof1.7billiontweetsfrom 2006-2009 and focused on how users from individualistic andcollectivisticcultureshaddifferentpreferences(ingeneral,while indi-vidualistic cultures arewestern, collectivistic are eastern). UsingHof-stede’sculturalmodel,scholarsconcludedthatpeoplefromindividual-isticculturesindeedpreferverticalemoticonslike :-)andpeoplefromcollectivisticculturespreferhorizontaloneslike^_^.

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Tenyears after the studybyParket al., anothergroupof researchers(Guntukuetal.,2019)triedtoseeifasimilarlogicholdsinthecaseofemojis.Theyselectedonlinemessages fromTwitterandWeibo.ChinaandJapanrepresentedtheeast,whileUSA,UK,andCanadarepresentedthewest.Performingbothfrequentialandsemanticanalysis,theyfoundout that, in general, usage inboth regionswas somewhat similar. Forexample,theordercorrelationforthemostfrequentemojiinbothare-aswas .745. In termsof semantics, itwas .59,meaning there is somenormativityregardlessoftheregion,thoughthisisstilllessnormativitythancorrelationsbetweenwestcountries.TangandHew(2019)pointedoutthattherewerealsoseveralinstanc-eswhenmore specific usage patternswere observed, for example, inthecaseofsequencingemojis.Inthewest,thesequencesprimarilyre-peatthemeaningofthemessage(forexample,“Iloveyou❤❤❤“)toamplifyit(Gawne&McCulloch,2018),usersontheChinesesocialnet-work Weibo are more prone to using sequences with their uniquemeanings, irrespectiveof the textaround it (Ge&Herring,2018).Forexample, in the east, a sequence like🙅🍺🍨 means “I do not havebeerandicecream.” Altogether,previousresultsshowsignificantdif-ferencesinusagepatternsbetweeneastandwest,butnottooconfusingordifferentinterpretations.

4.1.2 Language and country differences

Morefrequently,scholarschosetocompareemojiandemoticonusagein twoormore languagesor countries.Vandergriff (2013) found thatnonverbal cues, such as interpunction or emoticons, are context de-pended,thusnotusuallycarryingameaningontheirown.Thismeansthey also inherently relyon the text and language they arepresentedwithin.More subtledifferenceswere found in the caseof researchbyBarbierietal.(2016a).TheirresearchstudiedemojiusageinAmericanEnglish, British English, Italian and Spanish. While overall semanticswerepreservedbetweenlanguages,theresearchfoundthatspeakersofItalian interpret emojis slightly differently than the speakers of otherlanguages.Severalstudiespresentedcomparisonsbetweentwocountries.Forex-ample,Roeleetal.(2020)comparedusageinNetherlandsandEngland

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and found theuserpatternsand interpretations inboth countriesaresimilar.

4.1.3 Intra-country and subculture differences

Someresearcherstriedtoexaminedifferencesinusagepatternswithinone country or a subcultural group. Barbieri et al. (2016b) comparedtweets fromBarcelona andMadridbut foundno semanticdifferencesbetween the two cities. In the case of lesser-used emojis, thereweresomesubtledifferencesinusagecontext.Others investigatedgroups ineasterncountries.Forexample,Zhouetal.(2017)foundinaqualitativestudythatcomparedusersfromurban,rural,andsmall-townareas inChina.Theydiscoveredthatemojisandstickers convey important cultural meanings specific to those areas.Chinais,afterall,distinctinitsemojiandemoticonusage,evenduetoitspoliticalclimate–somejournalisticreportsexplained, forexample,howemojisareusedtoavoidcensorship(Andersen,2018).Ingeneral,culturaldifferencesinemojiandemoticonusagecanbethe-oretically observed on all levels of cultural differences, whether be-tweenfundamentalpartsoftheworld,individualcountries,regions,orlanguages. The following systematic review will therefore explore allsuch levels. Emoticons are culturally dependent by nature, and in thecasesofemojis,theirunderstandingseemstobegloballyratheruniver-sal. However, in both cases, some differences can be expected in thenumber, frequency,andgrouping.Suchdisparitiescouldbeattributedtothepeopleindifferentculturescommunicatingdifferently,forexam-ple,moreimplicitlyorexplicitly(inlinewithHall’smodel)oropenlyordiscreetly, in individual and collectivistic cultures from Hofstede’smodel.

4.2 Individual predictors of emoji and emoticons

Although my thesis is not concerned with predictors of usage otherthanlargegroup(culture,nation)identity,itisalsoimportanttobrieflyaddress the extent towhich theusagepatternsdiffer due todifferentindividual characteristics, as theymay interferewith the culturalpre-

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dictorsthemselves,andtheyarefrequentlyexaminedinemoticonsandemojiresearch.Baietal.(2019)statethatmanymorefactors,includinggender,influencethepersonaluseofemojis.Onestudyfoundthatwhilemales and females understand the functions of emoji the same way(Herring&Dainas,2018), femalesuseemojimore frequentlyand inapositivecontext(Pradaetal.,2018).Womenalsotendtoperceiveemo-jis asmore familiar, precise, andmeaningful (Rodrigues et al., 2017).Also,Butterworthetal.(2019)foundthatinterpretationsofemojivarydependingonthegenderofthesender:“Textswithaffectionateemojiswere judged as more appropriate and likable when they came fromwomen than frommen” (p.1).These results suggest thatemojiusagecanbedifferentiatednotonlybyculturesbutalsobyothersociodemo-graphiccategories.Baietal. (2019)alsopointoutothercontributing factors thatcompli-cateusingemojisforcommunication.Thereare,ofcourse,severalpsy-chological aspects related to, for example, personality traits or extra-version(Hall&Pennington,2013).Theperceivedvalenceofanemojiisalso a problem:Berengueres and Castro (2017), for example, pointedoutthatthesamenegativeemojimayfeeldifferentintermsofnegativi-ty between sender and receiver. Confusion between senders and re-ceiverscanalsobepresentbecauseofdifferentexpectations.Thomsonetal.(2018),forexample,focusedonthemeaningsthatemojislike😉,😏,🍑 or🍆 have in sexual contexts, even though theiroriginalpur-posewasdifferent.Theresearchfoundthatinthecaseofsomeemojis,upto34%ofpeoplereceivetheminasexualcontext.Suchresultsim-ply that an emoji’s correct interpretationmay rely also on collective,culturallycreatedmeaning.Otherfactorsincludespecificsofaplatform.Forinstance,Miller(2016)exploredhowusersondifferentplatformsinterpret the😬 “grimacingface”emojidifferentlybecauseof thenon-consistentwaysmedia ren-derthischaracter.Onsomeplatforms,itwasperceivedmorepositively,whilesomepeoplefindthecharacternegative.Also,usersondifferentplatforms tend tohave theiruniquepreferences in theusageofemoji(Tauch&Kanjo2016).

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4.3 Emoji as an objective research tool

Notallresearchthat includesemojiscountswithusagedisparitiesbe-tween individuals and bigger groups. Some researchers assume thatinterpretationsandemotionalvalencesofemojisareuniversallysharedand use them as an objective research tool to measure other valuesacross countries. For thesepurposes, some scholars annotated emojisaccordingtotheirperceivednegativityorpositivity.Forinstance,KrajlNovaketal.(2015)classified751mostcommonemojibyusinghumanannotationand,KimuraandKatsurai(2017)assignedmultidimensionalemotionalvectorstoemoji,inasimilarmanneraspreviouslyexploredbyAokiandUchida(2011).Also,Mayanketal.(2016)arbitrarilydivid-edemojiintoclustersrepresentingdifferenthumanemotions.Such models that determine each’s emojis’ emotional valence can beusedinmanyways, includingthosehaving littletodowiththeemojisthemselves.Emojisasobjectivetoolshavealsobeenusedinfieldsclos-ertothetopicofthisthesis;sucharesentimentanalysis,performedonCMCtextsthatincludeemojis(Sarietal.2014;Felboetal.,2017).Someresearchersassumetheirindependenceonlanguage,sotheyusedthemfor cross-language validity (Guthier et al., 2017). Al-Azani (2018), forexample,usedemojitoanalyzesentimentsofArabictweets,hencealsopre-giving emojis emotional values in the process. This subset of re-search is by no means unsatisfactory, but it inherently assumes thatemojis areperceivedand thereforeused the samewaybyeverybody.Becauseofthat,thefollowingsystematicreviewwillnotincludethosestudies.

4.4 Research question

Emojiandemoticonresearcharewidespreadandtouchmanydifferentfields.Preliminaryliteraturesearchsuggeststhatsomeregions,suchasChina,maybealreadymoreinvestigated,whileothercountriescanul-timatelybeleftbehind.Asthepreviouschapteralsoshowed,thereareseverallevelsofculturaldifferences:betweenregions,languages,coun-tries,orevencities.Allofthemcanfunctionasdistinctiveculturalunits.However, they are not exclusive, and the effects of eachmay overlap,andthefollowingsystematicreviewwill includeallof them.Theterm

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culturesinthefollowingresearchquestionincorporateallthesecultur-alunits.Thewaysthedifferencesbetweenculturesareobservedalsodifferandcan also be conceptualized in a number of different ways: previousstudiesmeasuredfrequencyofemojisoremoticonsasapercentageofdigitaltext,diversityofthemostused,rankingsofthemostusedones,perceivedemotionalvalence,or interpretationsbymembersofdiffer-entcultures.Thesemeasuringmethodsaresummarizedunderpatternsof usage in the following research question. The research question isthereforeasfollows:RQ1:What differences in patterns of emoticons and emojis usage existbetweencultures?AstheRQsuggests, theaimofthefollowingsystematicreviewwillbemainlyexplorationandsummarization,asnosuchattemptinthissub-fieldhasbeenmade.Also, thesystematic reviewwillexplorewhetherresearchersusesomeofthepresentedculturalmodels.

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5 Method

ThesystematicreviewwasperformedbasedonPRISMAguidelinesthatensurereplicabilityandtransparencyof theresearch(PRISMA,2020).First,tofindstudiesthatwouldbeincludedinthereview,thekeywordsweredefinedbasedonpapersmentionedinpreviouspartsofthisthe-sis:emoji, emoticon, culture, cross-culture, country, language, region differ-encesIn order to gain the most relevant results, the keywords were con-structedintoasearchtermusingBooleans.Fourdatabaseswerecom-bined:WebofScience,Scopus,Proquest,andEbscoFinder.Becauseofthe specific user interfaces of the databases, the search terms wereslightlyalteredtoeachdatabasetosearchforsimilarstudieseffective-ly:

• WebofScienceandEbscoFinder:(emoji*ORemoticon*)AND(cross-cultur*ORcrosscultur*ORcul-tur*diff*ORcultur*ORlanguagediff*ORcountrydiff*ORcountr*ORregion)

• ProQuest: [STRICT] noft((emoji* or emoticon*) and ("cross-cultur*" or "cross cultur*" or "cultur* diff*" or cultur* or "lan-guagediff*"or"countrydiff*"orcountr*orregion))

• Scopus:TITLE-ABS-KEY((emoji*ORemoticon*)AND("cross-cultur*"OR"crosscultur*"OR"cultur*diff*"ORcultur*OR"lan-guagediff*"OR"countrydiff*"ORcountr*ORregion) )AND(LIMIT-TO(DOCTYPE,"ar")ORLIMIT-TO(DOCTYPE,"cp"))

Thefoursearcheswereperformedon10thNovember2021,onfulltextsof thestudies.Anexemptionhasbeenmade in thecaseof theScopusdatabase,which firstly produced over 2000mostly irrelevant studies.Hence, thesearchwas limited in thiscase to includeonlymentions intitle,abstract,orkeywords.Theprimaryinclusioncriteriawereselectedasfollows:

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• thestudymustbepublished inapeer-reviewedjournalorasaconferenceproceeding

• thestudymustbeinEnglish• fulltextofthestudymustbeavailable• the studymust focus on the usage of emojis/emoticons in the

formofeithertheirfrequency/theirpopularityororder• the study must provide information on the usage of emo-

ji/emoticons in a form allowing comparisons between at leasttwoculturalunits

Whiletheproceedingsarenottypicallysubjectedtosystematicreviewsinsocialsciences,theyaremorefrequentlyusedincomputersciences.Given the interdisciplinarynatureof this thesis, thedecisionwasalsomadetoincludethem.Chaptersfrombooks,diplomatheses,commen-taries,andotherformsofcontentwereexcludedapriori.Thesystemat-icreviewalsoconsistsofbothobjectivemeasurementsandself-reportsofemoticonsandemojiusage.

Web of Science 423 Scopus (titles, abstracts, keywords) 191 Proquest 121 Ebsco Finder 135 Total 850

Table1:BreakdownofnumbersofrecordsfoundbyeachdatabaseIntotal,n=850studieswerefound(Table1breaksdownthisnumberfor each database). After removing duplicates, n = 586 studies wereidentified. In the next step, titles of the studies were reviewed, andthose which did not involve CMC, digital communication, or culturalunits were removed. The rest (n = 268) was evaluated based on ab-stracts.Theirrelevantstudieswerefurtherexcludediftheymetatleastoneofthefollowingexclusioncriteria:

• the focus of the paperwas CMC or communication or culturalstudies,butnosurveyofemojisoremoticonswasconducted

• emojisoremoticonswere themainsubjectsof thegivenpaperbutwithoutanycomparisonbetweentwoormoreculturalunits(nations,age,etc.)

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• thearticlewasasentimentanalysiswhereemojisandemoticonswereusedasdeterminantsoftheemotionalvalenceofatextintheCMC,oremojiswereusedasanchorsinansweringscaleforquestionnaireitemsinsteadofotheranchors(numbersorworddescriptions)(seechapter4.3.)

• the only focus of the paper was on suggesting new emojis in-steadofstudyingthepresentones

• resultsofthepaperdidnotincludeanyfindingsregardingcross-cultural differences, even though the data itself was gatheredonetwoormoreculturalgroups

Figure2:Flowdiagramofthesystematicreview

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Fulltexts(n=32)werereadinthefollowingstep.Onepaperwasomit-tedfromthereviewduetoitsunavailabilityinfulltext,onebecauseitwas inTurkish only (abstractwas inEnglish).Otherswere ignored iftheymetoneofthepreviouslystatedexclusioncriteria.Intheend,n=17studieswerefoundtobeeligible.Twomorestudieswere found in a subsequent search of the citations of these studies(snowballmethod).Also, anexemptionhasbeenmade to includeonewidely cited but not academically peer-reviewed study. SwiftKey(2015) developers probably gathered the first global emoji dataset,which points out some cultural differences. Therefore, the followingsystematicreviewwillbeperformedonn=20studies.Figure2showsaflowdiagramthatillustratestheselection.Given theexploratorynatureof theresearchquestion, theresultswillbesynthesizednarratively.Themainresearch table (AppendixA,alsoavailable as separate Excel file in the thesis archive), which incorpo-rates the systematic reviewresults, consistsof several categories thatwillbeobserved.Firstly, itwillcategorizethestudiesbasedonthefo-cusonemoticonsoremojis.Secondly,thesourceoftheobservedemojiswillbepresentedandtheirprocessingmethod.Culturalunits that thegiven study uses will be offered. Notably, the following category willobserveiftheresearchersusedanyproposedculturalindexes.Then, four specificdifferences inpatternswill beobservedona four-pointscale:yes,mostlyyes,mostlyno,no.“Yes”or“no”meanthestudyshowed clear and consistent results for the respective usage pattern,withnocontradictions.“Mostlyyes”or“mostlyno”meanthattheover-allmajorityofcrucialfindingswereinonedirection,butsome(minori-ty)contradictingorinconclusiveresultswerealsopresented.Ifthegiv-enmetricwas not studied, the “n/a”markwas used. Apart from thiscoding mechanism, the key findings are summarized in the primaryresearchtable(AppendixA)andtheResultssection.The firstpattern isdifferences in thetypeofemoticonsusedbythecul-tural unit,whichwill prove or debunk the notion of distinct styles ofemoticons, for example, horizontal and vertical, used in different cul-turalunits.Inthecasesofresearchthatonlystudyemojis,thiscategoryisomittedsincethereisonlyoneemojistyleintheUnicode.

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Second,totalfrequencydifferencebytheculturalunitwillsignifywheth-erthegivenstudyfoundthat,forexample,Italiansareusingmoreemo-jisoremoticonsthanJapanese.Tocorrectlystateresultsinthiscatego-ry,thegivenstudyhastouseanequalsizeoftheresearchsample,forexample,thenumberoftweetsforallmeasuredculturalunits.Third, rankings of the most used difference by cultural unit signifywhetherthestudyobservediftherearedifferencesinthetopusedanindividualemojioremoticoningivencultures.Lastly,semanticdifferencesbytheculturalunitwillseeifthereareanydifferences in terms of interpretation or semantic usage of individualemojisoremoticonsbetweencultures.Allofthedifferencesinthesefourcategorieswillbedescribedbetweenemojisandemoticonsseparately,astheyaretechnicallydifferent,andthepatternsmaynotholdbothinthecasesofemojisandemoticons.

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6 Results

Several interesting patterns can be observed from the systematic re-view. This chapter will summarize results in the cases of emoticons,emojis,andtheircombinationswithculturalmodels.

6.1 Emoticons in cultural perspective

Eight4 of the twenty papers (7,8,9,13,14,15,16,20)5 in the systematicreview considered cultural differences in type of emoticon usage.Fiveofthemstudiedthedifferencesintheuseofwestern:-)andeast-ern (^_^) styles of emoticons. They unanimously agree that there areindeeddifferencesinusageofemoticonsbetweeneasternregionssuchas Japan and South Korea and western regions, such as English-speaking countries. As chapter 2.2. of this thesis stated, the easternstyleofemoticonscametolifeinJapan,andthestudiesprovedtheyareprevalentinthiscountryandsurroundingones,too.Parketal.(2013)suggestedthatemoticonusagediffersbetweenEastAsiaandtherestoftheworld,astatementwhichwassupportedayearlaterbyParketal.(2014),whoconcludedthatSouthKorea,Vietnam,Japan,andChinaarethe countries with the highest usage of eastern style emoticons. Thetraditionofeasternstyleemoticonsmaybeevenmoredeeplygroundedintherespectivesocieties,asKayanetal.(2006)foundthatEastAsiansrated emoticons in an instant messaging as significantly more im-portantthanNorthAmericans.Four studies also examined the differences in total frequency ofemoticonusageasapercentageofdigitaltext,threeofwhichfoundap-parent differences between countries. However, data is too sparse toclearconclusioninindividualcountries.Plug(2011)foundthatIndians(high-contextcultureaccordingtoHall)usemoreemoticonsthanGer-many(low-contextcountry),andKavanagh(2016)concludedJapanese(HC)usemoreemoticonsthanAmericans(LC),eventhoughhedidnot

4Combinationof“emoticons”and“emoticonsandemojis”categoriesincolumnIin

themainresearchtable(AppendixA)5Numberscorrespondingwiththenumbersinthemainresearchtable(AppendixA)

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explicitly use Hall’smodel. From these two, it would seem that high-context cultures tend to use more emoticons, but Park et al. (2020)found that English (LC) tweets includedmore emoticons thanKorean(HC),whichdeviates fromHall’smodel.Cheng (2017) furtherdividedtheeffectsofcultureonemoticonusage.WhilethereislittledifferencebetweenHCandLC countries in the caseof positive emoticons, somedifferencearises inthecaseofnegativeones:Chineseusers(HC)tendtousemorenegativeemoticonsthanSpanish(LC).Therefore,whileitiscleartherearesomedifferencesinpatternsofemoticonusagebetweencountries, more research needs to be on their correspondence withHall’sculturalmodel.Onlyonestudypursuedresults insemanticdifferences inemoticonusage.Thismaybeattributedtothefactthatemoticonsare,bydefault,simpleanddonotusuallyoffermultipleinterpretationsorcasesofus-age.Secondly,astherearetwodistinctivestylesofemoticons,astudyofinterpretationsmaynotmakesenseinthefirstplace.Still,Takahashietal.(2017)conductedaninterestingexperimentthatprovedthatnotonly cultural or psychological factors but also previous exposure toCMCmatters to interpret emoticons correctly. Tanzanians and Came-roonians (as opposed to Japanese) struggled to accurately assess theemotionof simple smileysJ,western :-), or eastern (^_^) emoticons,eventhoughtheyhadnotroubleofdoingsointhecaseswithpicturesofrealfaces.Themostconsistent findings foremoticonsand therespectivestudiesaresummedinTable2.

Finding Difference type Reference studies Eastern style of

emoticons is prevalent in Asian countries like

China, Japan, and South Korea

differences in type of emoticon usage

Park et al. 2013, Park et al. 2014, Cheng 2017

Members of high-context cultures use more emoticons than

members of low-context cultures

differences in total frequency

Plug 2011, Kavanagh 2016

Table2:Keyemoticonfindings

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6.2 Emojis in cultural perspective

The systematic review also showed several interesting cross-culturalpatternsintheusageofemojis.Intotal,14studies(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10,11,12,13,17,18,19)examinedtheirusagebetweentwoormorecul-turalunits, 6ofwhich lookedat total frequencydifferences. Fiveofthose6statedsignificantculturaldifferencesofemojisusedasa totalpercentage of digital text. For instance, English tweets includedmoreemojisthanDutch(Roeleetal.,2020),westernerstendedtousemoreemojis than easterners (Guntuku et al., 2019). People from the USA,France,andRussiawerethemostlikelytoinsertemojisintheirtweets(Lietal.,2019b).Inthesixthcase(Parketal.,2020),thesameresultswerepartially achieved,with tweets inKorean andArabic having thesamenumberofemojisandEnglishtweetscontainingmore.Mainly, thesestudiescompareddifferent setsof culturalunits (exceptfortwoworldwidesets),thereforeitcanbeconcludedthatusersfromdifferent countries use emojis in different frequencies, yet the data istoo sparse to give definitive conclusions on specific countries. Fourstudies(4,5,6,10)comparedexplicitlyusageofemojisbetweeneasternandwesterncountriesbutfoundmixedresults,withoutanysignificantconclusions compared to clear differences between east and west inemoticonusage.As opposed to emoticons, emojis seem to bemuchmore universal intheirapplicationsinvariouscultures.Amongsevenstudies(1,2,6,11,12,17,18,19)surveyedrankingsofthemostusedemojisindifferentculturalunits,sixconcludedthattherearemostlynosignificantdiffer-encesamongthetopusedemojis.Thecategoryoffacesisthemostusedone,withfacewithtearsofjoy😂 beingthemostusedinmostcoun-tries.Franceisalsoprobablyoneoftheonlycountrieswheretheheart❤ isthemostusedemoji,asunanimouslyconcludedbythreestudies(Lietal.,2019b;Luetal.,2016;SwiftKey,2015).Globally, emojis with faces, particularly those conveying happy emo-tions, represent about 70% of all emojis used (SwifKey, 2015). Also,whilethereisarelativesimilarityinusingpositiveemojis,somenationsmaygenerallyusemorenegativeemojis.AsCheng(2017)observed,theChineseusefrownieremojisthanSpaniards.

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Mixed results are presented in the case of semantic differences inemojiusage.Wealreadyknowthatmostemojisusedgloballyhaveapositivevalence.Emojisoffacesisthevastmajorityofallemojisused,andrankingsofthemostusedemojisrarelydiffersignificantly.There-fore,onecouldarguethatemojisareindeeduniversal,buttheresultsofthissemanticreviewsuggestthatitverymuchdependsontheculturescompared.

Table3:KeyemojifindingsForexample,Barbierietal.(2016a,2016b)foundnodifferencesinse-mantics,bothinthecaseofcomparingMadrid,BarcelonaandUSA,UK,Spain, and Italy. Norwere observed in a study by Feng et al. (2016),whocomparedMyanmar,Laos,Thailand,andVietnam,orinfindingsbyRoeleetal.(2020),whocomparedEnglandandNetherlands.However,contradictingresultsarepresentedinthecaseswhereschol-arscompareddatafromChinesenetworkWeiboandTwitter.BothGe-Stadnyk(2021)andLietal. (2019a) foundthatWeibousershavedif-ferentwaysofusingemojis, forexample,when linkedtocertainemo-tionsor in thecasesof combiningemojis.Aspresentedbefore,Weibousers tend to give emoji combinations their concept-based functions,

Finding Difference type Reference studies Members of different cultures use emojis at different rates


Roele et al. 2020, Guntuku et al. 2019, Park et al. 2020

The most used emojis are mostly the same across cultures

ranking of the most used emojis

SwiftKey 2015, Barbieri 2016b, Barbieri 2016a

People from individualistic and long-term oriented countries are more likely to use positive emojis


Li et al. 2019b, Lu et al. 2016

People from high uncertainty avoidance countries are less likely to express positive emotions using emojis


Li et al. 2019b, Lu et al. 2016

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whileTwitterusersusethemmorefrequentlytoamplifythemessage.Itmustbenoted,though,thatnoneofthesefindingsnecessarilymeanthatWeibo andTwitter users understand some emojis differently. AsGuntukuetal.(2019)found,whilewesternersmayusemoreemojisingeneral,theyarecross-culturallyunderstoodsimilarly.

6.3 Used theoretical frameworks

Twostudies linkedemojiusagetoHofstede’sculturalmodel,andtheyprovide striking similarities (Li et al., 2019b; Lu et al., 2016). Eventhough the research teams used global datasets from different timesandsourcesanddifferentsentimentscoringmethodologies, theybothfoundthesamecorrelationswithHofstede’sculturalmodel.Accordingto both 1.) people from individualistic cultures such as Australia aremore likely tousepositiveemojis,2.)people from long-termorientedcountries use more positive emojis, 3.) users from high uncertaintyavoidance countries are less likely to express positive emotions. Bothalsoconcludedthatindividualismseemstobethemostdecisivefactor.Again though, it shouldbenoted that thisdatadoesnotmeanpeoplefrom individualistic or long-term oriented cultures understand theemojisdifferently,theyjustusesomeofthemindifferentfrequencies..Two more studies linked Hall’s model to both emojis and emoticons(Cheng,2017;Park,2020)andtheyarementionedinchapter6.1.Onemore study (Pflug, 2011) used Hall’s cultural model exclusively foremoticons. None of the other 15 studies used a cultural theoreticalframework.Even thoughmost of the studies did not used Hofstede’s framework,their results can be linked to it subsequently. For example, Cheng(2017)statesthatChineseuserstendtheusemorenegativeemoticonsthanSpanishusers.AccordingtoHofstede,Chinaranks20andSpain51onthe0-100individualismscale(HofstedeInsights,2021)andbothLiet al. (2019b) a Lu et al. (2016) concluded that more individualisticcountriesusemorepositiveemojis.Therefore,inthiscategoryCheng’sresultsareconsistentwithstudiesthatexplicitlyuseHofstede’smodel.On the other hands, it should be noted that in other two categories(long-termorientationanduncertaintyavoidance)Cheng’sfindingson

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ChinaandSpaindeviatesfromLietal.(2019b)aLuetal.(2016)signifi-cantly.Noothersuchcorrelationscouldbeobservedwithin thescopeofthisreview,sinceLiandLubothsummarizedresultsforsubcategoryofpositivelyvalancedemojis,notemojisinlargeasotherstudies.In summary, apparent differences can be observed in the usage pat-ternsofemojisbetweencultures.Themostusedemojisgloballyarethesame,butculturesdifferintheamountofemojisusedasapercentageof digital text. Emojis seem to bemore globally universal than emoti-cons,butmixedresultsdonotsayclearlywhetherthereareconsidera-bledifferencesintheirinterpretation.

6.4 Other observations

Other conclusions could be also drawn. The data from the presentedstudiesmaybesusceptibletoabias,asin9outof20cases,Twitterdatawasused.Inothercategories,suchconcentrationswerealsoobserved,with6out of 20 studiesusingChina andEnglish-speaking countryorEnglish as a language was studied in 10 cases, without consideringstudieswithglobaldatasets.Inthediscussionsection,Iwillelaborateontheseissues.

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7 Discussion

This thesis focusedonculturaldifferences inemoticonsandemojius-age. Both represent an enrichment of text-based computer-mediatedcommunication,andbothwereproventoaffectinterpretationsofsentmessages(e.g.Walther&D’addario,2001).Theirpopularityamongus-ersraisedquicklyandtoday,theirusageisubiquitous.Bothcanbealsonon-verbalandtoacertainextentlanguage-independent,whichmakesthemparticularlyinterestingforlearningaboutinterculturalcommuni-cationpatternsdifferences.Viasystematicreview,IaimedtoansweraresearchquestionWhatdifferences inpatternsofemoticonsandemojisusageexistbetweencultures?Giventhedifferencesbetweenemojiandemoticons,especiallyintheirdevelopment, I focus on them separately. Regarding emoticon usage,theabove-presentedresultssuggestthatthereareindeedapparentdif-ferencesbetweencultures:First,eastern-styleemoticonsareprevalentincountrieslikeJapanandSouthKoreaandsecond,membersofhigh-contextculturesusemoreemoticonsthanusersinlow-contextcultures.Still, they hardly directly correlate with Hall’s or Hofstede’s models,presumablybecausethedifferencesinusageareratheraconsequenceoffactualdifferencesinavailableemoticonstylesandtheirconsequentdependenceongeographicalareasthantoacultureassuch.Theeast-ernstyleseemstobemoreconcentratedinafewcountrieslikeJapanorSouth Korea, while the western style is more distributed worldwide.Since only one study sought to examine differences in understandingemoticons(Takahashietal.2017),noclearconclusionscanbedrawn;however, it showed a practicalmethodology that can be replicated inothercultures.Therelativelackofstudiesonemoticonsisalsounder-standable because with the spread of emojis, emoticons became lesspopular, both among users and researchers. However, the studieswhichareavailable suggest that theeastern styleof emoticons is stillpresentincertaincountries,despitetheglobalizationofdigitaltechnol-ogiesthathappenedsincethe1980swhentheywerefirstinvented,anddespitetheoverwhelmingpopularityofemojis.More studies focused on emojis. Altogether, they pointed out differ-encesinfrequencyofusage,andthesedifferenceswereapparentonthe

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large (e.g.,westerners vs. easterners, Guntuku et al., 2019) aswell assmaller cultural units (e.g. individualEuropean countries,Roele et al.,2020).Onthecontrary,thedifferencesinrankingofmostpopularemo-jisweresmallornone.And lastly, the includedstudies contain incon-sistent findings related to semantic differences. This unclear overallpattern of differences in emoji usage makes it challenging to drawstrongconclusionsbasedontheoreticalexplanation.AsImentioned,onlyfivestudiesactuallyusedanyculturaltheoreticalframework – and the used theoretical frameworks (particularly Hof-stede’s) were largely criticized by many scholars. My review suggestthatHofstede’sculturalmodel isusable inclusteringculturesby theiroverallemojiusage.BothLietal.(2019b)aLuetal.(2016)suggestthatpositionofacountryontheindividualismscalecorrelateswiththerela-tiveusageofpositiveemojis,withmoreindividualisticcountriesusingmorepositiveemoji.SuchresultsareconsistentwithafindingofCheng(2017) who concluded that Chinese users (collectivistic country) usemorenegative emojis than Spanishusers (more individualistic) coun-try.Lietal. (2019b)alsosuggeststhatsuchresultsmightpointtothefact than in collectivistic countries, showing positive emotions is dis-couragedwhile in individualistic encouraged. In general, such deeplygroundedculturalnormsmaythereforeinfluencethewayspeopleuseemojis. In other categories, however, Cheng’s results deviate somoreresearchneedstobedoneinthisarea.Fromthecurrentstateofemojistudies,itseemsthatthealltoolsanddataforitarealreadyavailable.Theresultsofthisreviewrelatedtorankingofthemostpopularemojis,show that in these aspects, studied cultural units hardly differ. Giventhatbasicemotionsareuniversal,andthatemojisareoftenusedasin-dicatorofemotions,thisparticularresultmaybeaconsequenceoffun-damental similarities among humans in any culture. Such reasoningmayalsoexplainwhyresearcherscametoinconclusiveresultsregard-ingsemanticdifferences.Thequestionremainsifemojiscanbeasourceofanysubstantialmisunderstandings.Beforemaking conclusions, it is however also important to point outlimits in thecurrentresearch thatshouldbe taken intoconsideration.Firstly,scholarsusedonlinedataforcomparingemoticonoremojius-age, and in the 9 cases out of 20 studies compared, Twitter datawas

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used. This social networking site remains a popular source of data inCMCresearch ingeneralbecause itprovidesdata through itsApplica-tionProgrammingInterfaces(API)(Wasim,2019).Butitshouldbenot-ed that Twitter is used by approximately 300millionmonthly activeusersworldwide(Statista,2020)whoaredisproportionallydistributed,withlargesegmentbelongingtotheUnitedStatesandJapan–thefirsttwo countries that account for around 136 million users (Statista,2021).Moreover,Twitterusersvarydemographicallyfromthegeneralpublic.Forexample,U.S.usersaremorelikelytobeDemocrats,young-er, have higher education and income than the average American(Wojcik&Hughes,2019).Therefore,drawingconclusionsontheemoti-conandemojiusagebasedonlyonTwitterdatacanbeproblematic,asthey may not represent the given culture well. The same limitationshouldbeconsideredwhenresearchersuseWeibotodescribeChineseusers or emoji keyboard apps that are, for example, usedonly on theAndroidoperationsystem.Also,Twitterisauniqueplaceforusageemojis.Asthereisalimitationof280characterspertweet(previously140),somepeoplemaychoosetouse,forinstance,anemojiof🇨🇿insteadofwritingCzechrepublicbe-cause theemoji countsonlyasonecharacter.However, suchusageofemojisisthenpurelypracticalandprobablydoesnotreflectanymean-ingfulculturalorindividualdifferences.Secondly,thepresentedstudiesrelyonasmallsubsetofculturalunits,andsomeofthemcanbeoverrepresented.In6ofthe20proposedstud-ies,Chinesedatawasused,andin10cases,anEnglish-speakingcountryorEnglishlanguageitselfwasstudied(excludingglobaldatasets).Suchconcentration can result in neglecting some countries entirely whiledrawinginaccurateconclusionsonothers.Thirdly, the presented studies primarily differ in theirmethodologies(experimentswithmade-upemojis,userquestionnaires,usageofobjec-tivedata fromsocialmedia). It isbeyond the scopeof this systematicreview to evaluate them. Since the selected science field is relativelythinandthegoalofthisthesiswasexploratory,thedecisionwasmadeto includestudiesregardlessof theirmethodology.Becauseof thedif-ferentmethods,thesizeoftheresearchsamplesalsodifferedwidely.In

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effect,somecountriesarethusrepresentedonlybyasmallnumberofparticipants,whereasothersareoverrepresented.Thescientificfieldofculturaldifferencesinemojiandemoticonsusageisalsofullofopportunitiesforfurtherresearch,asnumerouspresentedstudies offer valuable best practice examples that can be used in thecases of other cultural units. Notably, Barbieri et al. (2016a, 2016b)suggest a practical AI-based methodology for sentiment analysis ofemojis, which can be used further in combination with other datasources than Twitter or with Hofstede’s or Hall’s cultural model.Takahashi et al. (2017) are the only ones who included fieldwork inthreecountries in their research.Thismethodofevaluating the inter-pretationofemojisoremoticonscanhelpreducethebiasofaparticularCMCplatform and possibly gainmore qualitative data, as the currentresearchinthisareaisbasedmainlyonquantitativedataanalysis.

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8 Conclusion

Thepurposeofthisthesisistoexploretheusageoftwoaspectsofcom-puter-mediated communication, emoticons, and emojis in their cross-cultural perspective. As the theoretical part of this thesis shows, ourpredecessorssearchedforawaytoconveyemotionsorfeelingsintoawritten text from the16th century.Naturally, this tendency translatedintoCMCcommunication,andhenceemoticonsand lateremojiscametolife.Boththeoriesandempiricalfindingsfrommediacommunication,sociology,orpsychologysuggestedthattheremaybesomedifferencesin howusers fromdifferent cultural units use and understand emoti-cons and emojis. Also, previous works from cross-cultural studiesshowedthatsomemodelscouldmeasuresuchdifferences.Therefore, a systematic review of previous studies in this subfield isconducted as the central part of this thesis. To the best of myknowledge,nosystematicreviewofthisspecificfocushasbeenunder-taken so far. The systematic review consists of 20 studies publishedbetween2006and2021inpeer-reviewjournalsor inproceedingsforconferences. Given the nature of this relatively new field, narrativemethodsareselectedforsynthesis.Inthecaseofemoticons,substantialdifferencesarefoundinusagepat-terns,mainlybecauseof twostylesofemoticons–westernsuchas :-)and eastern such as＼(＾▽＾)／. The eastern style of emoticonsseemstobeconcentratedinafarsmallernumberofcountries,suchasJapan and South Korea, while the western style is more widespread.Also, emoticons seem to be used in different frequencies in differentcultural units. However, the research that has been conducted so fardoesnotclearlyanswerwhetherthereareanysemanticdifferencesorinterpretationsinthewayspeoplearoundtheworldunderstandemoti-cons,nor theirusagecanbeclearly linked toaculturalmodel.There-fore,moreresearchneedstobedoneinthisarea.Thestudiesseemtobemoreextensiveforemojis,presumablybecauseoftheirworldwideadoption.Severalinterestingconclusionscanbede-rivedfromthesystematicreview.Firstly,users fromdifferentculturalunits use emojis in different frequencies, but no clear findings canbe

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observedinthequestionofwhatculturalunitsusethemost.Rankingsofthemostusedemojisgloballyarealsothesame,withpositiveemojisand face emojis accounting for the vast majority of all emojis used.Somepartialdifferencescanbeobserved,suchasFrancebeingoneofthe fewcountries thathave❤ as themostusedemojis (majorityofthe other countries have the facewith tears of joy😂) or some little,culturallydependentuserpatterns,suchashigherusageofrice-basedfoodemojis inAsiancountriesorsimilaruseof🌊🌅and🌴 insunnycountrieslikeSpainorItaly.Thefewstudiesthatlinkedemojiusagetoaculturalmodelfoundsignificantdifferences,suchasthatpeoplefromacountrywithastrongindividualismfromHofstede’smodeluseposi-tive emojismore than those from collectivistic cultures.One can onlyspeculatewhythis is thecase,butsomecluesmay lie indemographicdifferences,orthewaypositivethinkingisencouragedordiscouragedinthegivencountry.Inconclusive differences were found in the case of the semantics ofemojis. Eastern cultures seem to have a more sophisticated way ofcombiningemojis,whilewesternersusethemmoretoamplifyagivenmessage.ResearchalsosuggeststhatinChineseandEnglish,dissimilaremojismaybeusedtoconveycertainemotions.However,noneofthefindings on emojis suggest a substantial difference in the interpreta-tionsofsomeemojis,relyingsolelyonculturalfactors.Thefieldstudiedinthepresentedsystematicreviewisyoung,andmul-tipleopportunitiesforsubsequentstudiesareoffered,suchasapossi-bilitytomorewidespreadusageofcross-culturalmodelsandtheoreti-calbackground.Moreresearchneedstobedonetoconfirmordenythatemojisareculturallyindependent.Also,mostofthedatafromthissub-field come from a small number of countries and internet platforms.Still,thepresentedstudiesoffervaluableframeworksthatcouldbeim-plementedinfuturestudies.

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RESEARCH TABLE

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Appendix A Research table

RESEARCH TABLE

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RESEARCH TABLE

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The table is also available as separate Excel file in the archive of the thesis.

emoticons and emojis in cross-cultural perspective - is muni

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