OPICO: A platform for collecting and analyzing emoji usage

Emojis have emerged as a popular form of digital communication that can quickly convey big ideas or expressions with a single character. Since their creation in 1999, emojis have become a mainstay in the digital lexicography of instant messaging and social media. However, emojis are traditionally used in conjunction with text, as supplemental metadata. This paper explores the feasibility of emoji-only communication and emoji grammars. To gather emoji-only data, we built Opico, an emoji-first, social media mobile app that allows users to share emoji reactions about the places they visit with their friends. Each post in the app is a one-to-five emoji sentence to express an emotion, sentiment, or description about a location. After collecting over 3500 emoji reactions and having over 900 users on the app, the results demonstrate emoji-only communication provided concise forms of expression about various locations across the world. Data analysis has uncovered the various patterns and linguistics of how users construct emoji-only sentences, building the foundation for an emoji grammar.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Khandekar, Sujay

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kumar, Ranjitha

• emoji, digital communication, mobile, app

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018 Sujay Khandekar

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101549

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101549