National Variations in Emoji Use

"Researchers at the University of Michigan and Peking University analyzed 427 million messages from nearly 4 million smartphone users in 212 countries."

Interesting, but how did researchers at these institutions get hold of what one would have hoped were private communications???

"DATA COLLECTION To facilitate the cross-cultural analysis of emoji usage, we construct a large-scale data set that represents the behavior of millions of users from hundreds of countries and regions. In this section we describe the data collection process and some important considerations. Kika Emoji Keyboard The data set was originally collected by the Kika Emoji key- board (i.e., Kika), a leading Android input method app in Google Play (Figure 1). As one of the most popular third-party keyboards, it has gained millions of downloads and installa- tions across the world, and was ranked as the top 25 most downloaded apps of Google Play in 2015. Kika supports the input of 1,281 emojis (compliant with the Unicode Standard) and more than 60 languages. Just like other popular third-party input methods, the system explicitly notifies that the user input may be collected while enabling the Kika Keyboard. With users’ approval, Kika is allowed to collect the meta data, e.g., the language in use, the anonymized content of text messages (identified by “Send” action), and the country information (op- tional at user registration), for research purposes. In particular, Kika explicitly declares in its Privacy Policy that no personal and traceable data from the user input are recorded."

They answered your question in the research paper, third page, second column.

I never used emojis until I joined this engineering site. They are useful if communicating with different strangers to denote sarcasm and humor when the recipient is not familiar with my particular brand of either. :>)

Of course being old and never even seeing a PC until I was in my 20's has probably rendered me untrainable as I am just becoming somewhat tolerant of textspeak. LOL.

I can just imagine what Shakespeare would think of this travesty of communicating human emotions. Unfortunately, he was never taken too seriously, since we never killed all the attorneys as he so wisely suggested long ago. :>(

It all comes down to using a minimum of effort to generate a maximum of emotion and will flourish long after I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

I skipped over all that and went to full size pictures....that's right I went BIG...

Oh, they had their own style of emojis in Shakespeare's day:

They are useful if communicating with different strangers to denote sarcasm and humor when the recipient is not familiar with my particular brand of either. :>)

Yes - definitely why I need to use them a bit more. I really wish they were emojis available when speaking. I've freaked out the French engineers I work with on many process skids. They are so busy translating in their minds they don't catch the tone of my voice. Same result as a typed discussion - no useful inflections of the voice to help decipher the meaning of the spoken word, or in this case, they miss that part.

A picture is worth 1000 words. That's why both painters and writers most often starve.

A thousand pictures is a very short movie. No one will buy tickets to that.

Books are great, once read, if not worthy of the shelf, make at least a source of warmth. Burn a book today, LOL.

Hasn't Del got something better to do than to chase that bug all day?

Too bad it wasn't a Black Mamba.

No! No!

Not Mama, Mamba!

Trump's new secret weapon spins out of control leaving scorched earth contracts all over his desk... more news at six.

Just an aside: I was wondering why/when their name had changed from emoticon to emoji.

It turns out that it's fairly widely accepted that the text based versions:- :>) , ;>), {:-) , etc. are emoticons, and, the graphic icons:- , , are emojis.

There's a surprisingly (to me) comprehensive list on Wiki.

I prefer the emoticons as they require some thought to prepare.

"I was wondering why/when their name had changed from emoticon to emoji."

From the Wiki:

"Originally meaning pictograph, the word 'emoji' comes from Japanese e (絵, "picture") + moji (文字, "character"). The resemblance to the English words 'emotion' and 'emoticon' is purely coincidental."

It is because the current generation has problems with Standard English so they re-invent it to confuse us old farts. As far as I am concerned there is nothing I can say to a blank stare into a cell phone to warn them of the inbound train.

So smile, enjoy the snow while it lasts, and enjoy your coffee, maybe even a donut.

What difference does any of it make to the broader picture of what is pressing, urgent, relevant or life-changing today? Show me one emoji that is that important.

I think I'll just relax and have some coffee and toast:

c(__)

[::]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Looks like research leading to an igNobel prize.