New Books Network Podcast: „Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media“

Im New Books Net­work Pod­cast in der Rei­he „New Books in Lan­guage“ sprach Jie­un Kiaer am 16.8.2023 über ihre Forschung rund um Emo­ji. Ihr Buch dazu ist bei uns als eBook ver­füg­bar.

Emo­ji Speak: Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Behav­iours on Social Media (Blooms­bury, 2023) by Dr. Jie­un Kiaer pro­vides an in-depth dis­cus­sion of emo­ji use in a glob­al con­text, this vol­ume presents the use of emo­ji as a huge­ly impor­tant facet of com­put­er-medi­at­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­ing Dr. Kiaer to coin the term ‚emo­ji speak‘.

Explor­ing why and how emo­jis are born, and the dif­fer­ent ways in which peo­ple use them, this book high­lights the diver­si­ty of emo­ji speak. Pre­sent­ing the results of empir­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions with par­tic­i­pants of British, Bel­gian, Chi­nese, French, Japan­ese, Jor­dan­ian, Kore­an, Sin­ga­pore­an, and Span­ish back­grounds, it rais­es impor­tant ques­tions around the com­plex­i­ty of emo­ji use.

Though emo­jis have become ubiq­ui­tous, their inter­pre­ta­tion can be more chal­leng­ing. What is humor­ous in one region, for exam­ple, might be con­sid­ered inap­pro­pri­ate or insult­ing in anoth­er. Whilst emo­ji use can speed up our com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we might also ques­tion whether they con­vey our emo­tions suf­fi­cient­ly. More­over, far from belong­ing to the youth, peo­ple of all ages now use emo­ji speak, prompt­ing Kiaer to con­sid­er the future of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion in an increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal world.

This inter­view was con­duct­ed by Dr. Miran­da Melch­er whose doc­tor­al work focused on post-con­flict mil­i­tary inte­gra­tion, under­stand­ing treaty nego­ti­a­tion and imple­men­ta­tion in civ­il war con­texts, with qual­i­ta­tive analy­sis of the Angolan and Mozam­bi­can civ­il wars.