Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji

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Hey emoji users: Did you know that when you send your friend Google's grinning face with smiling eyes emoji on your Nexus, they might see Apple's grinning face with smiling eyes emoji on their iPhone? And it’s not just Google's grinning face with smiling eyes emoji; this type of thing can happen for all emoji (yes, even pile of poo emoji). In a paper (download) that will be officially published at AAAI ICWSM in May, we show that this problem can cause people to misinterpret the emotion and the meaning of emoji-based communication, in some cases quite significantly. face screaming in fear emoji, we know.

What’s more, our work also showed that even when two people look at the exact same emoji rendering (e.g., Apple's grinning face with smiling eyes emoji), they often don’t interpret it the same way, leading to even more potential for miscommunication. face screaming in fear emojiface screaming in fear emoji!

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