Thesis: Emoticons as Social Information - The Effect of Emoticons on Interpersonal Perception in Computer-Mediated Business Communication (original) (raw)
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Studies in Higher Education, 2019
research ranges over marketing, strategy, HRM, and general management. He has published over one hundred pieces in these fields. Ana Javornik, Ph.D., focuses in her research on digital marketing and consumer behaviour with a specialization in experimental designs. Smile(y)-and Your Students Will Smile With You? The Effects of Emoticons on Impressions, Evaluations, and Behaviour in Staff-to-Student Communication Emoticon usage in computer-mediated communication (CMC) by university staff is potentially a double-edged sword in forming desired impressions in the minds of students, increasing perceived warmth but also decreasing perceived competence of the sender. Existing studies in higher education have provided little understanding of this trade-off. No work has examined effects of, first, emoticon usage on important educational outcomes (student evaluations, task behaviour), and second, potential moderators relevant within education (i.e., job title, institutional prestige, age of sender, assessment level). We contribute to this area of knowledge through three controlled experiments across different educational CMC settings (total n = 848). Generally, we find that emoticon use increases perceived warmth, which outweighs decrease in perceived competence of university staff, in that perceived warmth-but not competence-affects student evaluation and task behaviour positively. These findings hold largely irrespective of the moderators explored. Implications for higher education practitioners are provided.
The communicative functions of emoticons in workplace emails: :-)
Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 2014
CMC research presents emoticons as visual representations of writers' emotions. We argue that the emoticons in authentic workplace e-mails do not primarily indicate writers' emotions. Rather, they provide information about how an utterance is supposed to be interpreted. We show that emoticons function as contextualization cues, which serve to organize interpersonal relations in written interaction. They serve 3 communicative functions. First, when following signatures, emoticons function as markers of a positive attitude. Second, when following utterances that are intended to be interpreted as humorous, they are joke/irony markers. Third, they are hedges: when following expressive speech acts (such as thanks, greetings, etc.) they function as strengtheners and when following directives (such as requests, corrections, etc.) they function as softeners.
Emoticons and social interaction on the Internet: the importance of social context
Computers in Human Behavior, 2007
The present study examines the influence of social context on the use of emoticons in Internet communication. Secondary school students (N = 158) responded to short internet chats. Social context (task-oriented vs. socio-emotional) and valence of the context (positive vs. negative) were manipulated in these chats. Participants were permitted to respond with text, emoticon or a combination of both. Results showed that participants used more emoticons in socio-emotional than in task-oriented social contexts. Furthermore, students used more positive emoticons in positive contexts and more negative emoticons in negative contexts. An interaction was found between valence and kind of context; in negative, task-oriented contexts subjects used the least emoticons. Results are related to research about the expression of emotions in face-to-face interaction.
A Study on Gender Perception on Emoticon in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the gender perception of emoticon in computer mediated-communication (CMC) in the Southern American College classroom. Participants were 74 undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of courses at University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama, who are familiar with using emoticons in web based context. Results indicate that (a) there were no significant difference perception between male and female using positive emoticon in social context, (b) there were no significant difference between male and female using positive emoticon in positive message and (c) there are no significant difference between male and female especially in happy, humor and attitude towards the positive message with positive emoticon. Future research should continue to extend these efforts by examining the ways emoticon used in real situation as in web messenger, virtual forum or community portal, to better understand the spontaneous interactions between recipient and sender. (US version) Technology enhances the way people communicate in the modern world. Communicating through the new channel of communication is becoming a trend in today’s environment. There are many issues pertaining on this medium whereby gender bias has contributed to the sustainability of it. The usage of emoticon has tremendously well accepted by the user when the message can be understood clearly without face-to-face interaction. When we use it as if, the face of the sender is in front of the computer screen when receiver receives the message. However, the amount and consistency of emoticon used in daily communication is debatable. Thus, this study tried to investigate is there any significant difference between male and female recipient when they receive the message.
Emoticons in computer-mediated communication: Social motives and social context
CyberPsychology & …, 2008
The study consisted of an online questionnaire about the social motives for emoticon use and an experimental part in which participants (N ؍ 1,251) had to respond to short Internet chats. In these chats, the interaction partner (friend vs. stranger) and the valence of the context (positive vs. negative) were manipulated. Results showed that emoticons are mostly used to express emotion, to strengthen a message, and to express humor. Furthermore, more emoticons were used in communication with friends than in communication with strangers, and more emoticons were used in a positive context than in a negative context. Participants seem to use emoticons in a way similar to facial behavior in face-to-face communication with respect to social context and interaction partner.
The Influence of Emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer Mediated-Communication (MA Thesis)
2008
One of the striking features of communicating via new media technologies such as instant messaging (IM), is its capacity to provide individuals with innovative means to simulate emotional expression while interacting in a real time online setting. Static and animated, graphic-based emoticons are often added to achieve these communicative functions in development of personal friendships, relationships, and even the therapeutic alliance within counselling relationships. However, little research has investigated the role of these graphical emoticons in IM communication. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to provide a needed empirical investigation into how these emoticons influenced participants’ interpretation of instant message statements. Specifically, this thesis involved an exploration of how different types of emoticons influenced, (a) participants’ ability to accurately interpret the emotion conveyed by instant message statements and (b) participants’ level of certainty about their message interpretations, across “clear” or “unclear” conditions of emotional valence clarity. Furthermore, this study also explored whether an interaction was present between emoticon exposure and the emotional valence clarity. The sample consisted of 121 adult male and female participants from Canada and the United States. Overall, the presence of an emoticon led to more accurate performance scores in message interpretation regardless of the emotional valence clarity, compared to the absence of emoticons. Clear, affectively valenced messages resulted in more accurate performance than unclear (neutral or ambiguous) messages. A significant interaction effect revealed that emoticons have the greatest effect on accurate message interpretation when the message itself is unclear. Simple and complex emoticons were virtually identical in their ability to facilitate accurate interpretations, in any valence condition. Despite near equivalence in terms of accuracy, complex emoticons were inferior to simple emoticons in facilitating participants’ certainty about their interpretations. The presence of simple emoticons alone resulted in significant, high levels of certainty compared to their absence. Interestingly, emotional valence did not impact participant certainty. Interaction effects in the context of certainty were also nonexistent. Possible reasons for the differing pattern of results and findings are explained. Finally, implications of these patterns and explanations for IM friendships, relationships and clinical practice are discussed.
The Role of Use of Emoji in Business on Communication and Employment Motivation
International Journal of Disciplines Economics & Administrative Sciences Studies, 2020
One of the main goals of today's organizations is to combine and integrate the goals of the employees with the goals of the organization. Organizations may have expectations from employees as well as employees' expectations from organizations and managers in achieving their goals. It is possible that these expectations, which are the source of the motivation, can be achieved through a natural and permanent communication within the organization. Communication should ensure that employees work together on the core values of the organization. The compliance process of the employee to the organization is accelerated and the productivity of the employee can be increased. The employee who adapts to the organization; sense of belonging and communication will increase and motivation process will accelerate. As a result of the development of technology, the use of digital tools has also become widespread. The individual, with the rapid development of technology and increased dependence in the field of communication, he expresses his feelings and thoughts and uses emojis. However, digital text messages are now part of everyday life. In these messages, the use of emoji is often preferred in order to convey their thoughts and ideas to the recipient correctly. The widespread use of emoji affects communication and also employees psychologically. In this regard, this study examines the role of emoji usage in the workplace and the motivation of the employee from a theoretical perspective.
Same Same But Different!? The Differential Influence of Smilies and Emoticons on Person Perception
Emoticons (ASCII-based character strings) and smilies (pictograms) are widely used in computer-mediated communication as substitutes to compensate for the absence of nonverbal cues. Although their usage has been investigated in numerous studies, it remains open whether they provoke differential effects and whether they lead to person perception patterns similar to what is known from face-to-face interactions. Based on findings from research about person perception and nonverbal communication, we investigated the differential effects of smilies and emoticons with regard to recipients' mood, message evaluation, and person perception in an experimental online study (n = 127) with a 2(smiley/emoticon) by 2(positive/negative) between-subjects design (with an additional control condition). Results generally support earlier findings, indicating that the valence of the cue (smiley or emoticon) affects the corresponding impression formation. Further, findings concerning the differential influence of both forms of cues show that there are no differences with regard to message interpretation , whereas smiling smilies have a stronger impact on personal mood than smiling emoticons. The perception of a writer's commitment was only altered by smilies, suggesting that they elicit a stronger impact than emoticons.
ODISEA. Revista de estudios ingleses
Emoticons are ordinarily linked to more colloquial computer-mediated exchanges such as informal emails, chats, comments on social networking sites, etc. In these genres, the interactional function of language is also predominant even if there can also be transactional elements. The question rises whether more transactional and formal exchanges make a similar use of emoticons. This paper aims to compare the use of emoticons in two contrastive datasets of computer-mediated communication where either the interactional or transactional function predominates to find out whether emoticons are used as much in transactional as in interactional encounters and whether they perform the same functions.
Exploring the potential effects of emoticons
Information & Management, 2008
In the past decade, e-mail has been the popular communication tool of millions of users and a large number of articles have attempted to explain its characteristics and impact on users and organizations [2]. Recently, IM has been gaining popular acceptance. Many users, especially the younger generation, use IM extensively often for many hours per day. The spread of IM is expected to continue and it is likely to become an important communication channel between coworkers. Although similar to e-mail and other communication devices, IM has many unique characteristics: one is its use of emotional icons: emoticons. They convey emotions using simple graphical icons to represent individual identity, presence, awareness, and emotions [6,8]. Although other applications may also use emoticons, the extent of their use and the degree of their sophistication is mainly in IM. 2. Development of IM Delivering messages instantly is certainly not new. Telegraphs and telephones have been available for more than a century. Computer applications capable of sending instant text messages over networks have been available since the 1960s. On the Internet, an early application provided instantaneous interaction was the chat room. This provided the communication in a semipublic environment. The first well known IM application was ICQ, introduced in 1996. Since then, many IM applications have been created, e.g., AIM 1 of AOL, Yahoo! Messenger 1 , Skype, and MSN Messenger 1 from Microsoft 1. Typical IM software is a small client-side application residing on a user computer. It offers the same privacy as e-mail or a chat room. Users may configure their IM to communicate automatically when online. The server provides an IM client with the status of a user on the ''buddy list'' and necessary parameters to facilitate communication. It provides users with near-synchronous one-toone communication and near-immediate confirmation of messages sent, making the exchange highly interactive. IM can be useful in business; people may rapidly switch between it and other tasks and its applications can provide presence awareness by notifying users that their coworkers are online and ready to discuss mutual problems. Early versions of IM worked like a telephone. Information was exchanged instantly and Information & Management 45 (2008) 466-473