English Research Paper

The roles of emojis in mobile phone notifications

UbiComp 2016 |

Abstract

The texts in mobile messages are not always easy to decipher since tone and body language is removed from the context. Emojis offer an attractive way to express emotions to avoid misunderstandings of message tone. In this paper we shed the light on the roles of Emojis in phone notification, we conducted an in-situ study to gather phone notification data. We outline the relationship between Emojis and various social network applications including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. Early results allow us to draw several conclusions in relation to number, position, type and sentimental value of Emojis. It turns out that most popular Emojis in one social app is not as popular in the others. Emojis sentimental polarity in Twitter is high and overall number of Emojis is less than Facebook. The sentimental value of Emojis is more meaningful when there are multiple Emoji in one notification.