Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing

Ongoing research has shown that emoji can be used by children to discriminate food products, but it is unclear if they express emotions and how they are linked to emotional words. Little is known about how children interpret emoji in terms of their emotional meaning in the context of food. This study aimed at investigating the emotional meaning of emoji used to describe food experiences in 9–13-year-old pre-adolescents and to measure related age and gender differences. The meaning of 46 emoji used to describe food experience was explored by: mapping emoji according to similarities and differences in their emotional meaning using the projective mapping technique, and linking emoji with emotion words using a check-all-that-apply (CATA) format. The two tasks gave consistent results and showed that emoji were discriminated along the valence (positive vs. negative) and power (dominant vs. submissive) dimension, and to a lower extent along the arousal dimension (high vs. low activation). In general, negative emoji had more distinct meanings than positive emoji in both studies, but differences in nuances of meaning were found also among positive emoji. Girls and older pre-adolescents (12–13 years old (y.o.)) discriminated positive emoji slightly better than boys and younger pre-adolescents (9–11 y.o.). This suggests that girls and older pre-adolescents may be higher in emotional granularity (the ability to experience and discriminate emotions), particularly of positive emotions. The results of the present work can be used for the development of an emoji-based tool to measure emotions elicited by foods in pre-adolescents.

The Meaning of Emoji to Describe Food Experiences in Pre-Adolescents

Should emoji replace emotion words in questionnaire-based food-related consumer research?

Attention-based BiLSTM models for personality recognition from user-generated content

IntroductionThis study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses of social media data collected through three key stages of the pandemic, to highlight the following: ‘First wave’ (March to May...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/20552076211059649

Long Covid: online patient narratives, public health communication and vaccine hesitancy

A growing body of research explores emoji, which are visual symbols in computer mediated communication (CMC). In the 20 years since the first set of emoji was released, research on it has been on the increase, albeit in a variety of directions. We reviewed the extant body of research on emoji and noted the development, usage, function, and application of emoji. In this review article, we provide a systematic review of the extant body of work on emoji, reviewing how they have developed, how they are used differently, what functions they have and what research has been conducted on them in different domains. Furthermore, we summarize directions for future research on this topic.

/pdf/a-systematic-review-of-emoji-current-research-and-future-46phb8j6fk.pdf

A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives.

Previous studies have reported that general or photo-specific social media use was associated with women’s body dissatisfaction and body image disturbance. The current study replicated and expanded upon these findings by identifying the positive association between social media influencer viewing and intentions to change appearance. This study surveyed a sample of 7,015 adult female TikTok users in China regarding their social media influencer viewing frequency, self-objectification, social comparison tendencies when watching short videos, intentions to change appearance, and demographics. The results showed that female TikTok users’ self-objectification mediated the association between their influencer viewing frequency and their intentions to change appearance. Furthermore, social comparison tendencies moderated the association between influencer viewing and intentions to change appearance in that the proposed association was stronger for female TikTok users who had lower social comparison tendencies when watching short videos, compared to female TikTok users who had higher social comparison tendencies. The counter-intuitive finding on social comparison tendencies indicated that women who have higher social comparison tendencies may be more aware of the negative influences and adjust their expectations. The observed association between social media influencer viewing and intentions to change appearance was statistically significant but trivial in terms of effect size. Although the result could warn policymakers and practitioners to design media and health literacy campaigns to cultivate body positivity, caution should be exercised when evaluating the practical implications.

Social Media Influencer Viewing and Intentions to Change Appearance: A Large Scale Cross-Sectional Survey on Female Social Media Users in China

This study examined two ways of using the TikTok application (active vs. passive use), and their association with female users' self-esteem pertaining to appearance and weight. By adopting a cross-sectional online survey design, this study recruited 7,750 adult female TikTok users from China (Douyin), and acquired self-reported data on 2 ways of using TikTok, state-level social comparison, appearance-esteem, weight-esteem, body mass index, and age. The results indicated that passive and active TikTok uses were negatively and positively associated with participants' appearance- and weight-esteem, respectively. A mediation analysis revealed that the participants' state-level social comparison while using TikTok mediated the association between two ways of TikTok use, and their effects on appearance- and weight-esteem. These results help us understand the complicated impact of TikTok use on body image, and design campaigns for promoting body acceptance.

Zhe Mu

Papers

A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives.

Social Media Influencer Viewing and Intentions to Change Appearance: A Large Scale Cross-Sectional Survey on Female Social Media Users in China

Female Users' TikTok Use and Body Image: Active Versus Passive Use and Social Comparison Processes