Nonverbal communication with emojis in social media: dissociating hedonic intensity from frequency.

As a popular means of nonverbal communication in social media, emojis provide quick predictions about public sentiments towards social events. Previous analyses of emojis reported that people use positive emojis more frequently than negative emojis. However, psychological research reveals a negativi...

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Publicado en:Language Resources & Evaluation Vol. 57; no. 1; pp. 323 - 343
Autores principales: Li, Lu, Wang, X. T.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Mar2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2023
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      pub: Springer Nature
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        10.1007/s10579-022-09611-6
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        atl: Nonverbal communication with emojis in social media: dissociating hedonic intensity from frequency.
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        au:
          Li, Lu
          Wang, X. T.
        affil:
          School of Government, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 102488, Beijing, China
          School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 518172, Shenzhen, China
      su:
        Loss aversion
        Nonverbal communication
        Emoticons & emojis
        Public opinion
        Social media
        Negativity bias
      sug:
        subj:
          Loss aversion
          Nonverbal communication
          Emoticons & emojis
          Public opinion
          Social media
          Negativity bias
      keyword:
        Emojis
        Hedonic expressions
        Public sentiment
      ab: As a popular means of nonverbal communication in social media, emojis provide quick predictions about public sentiments towards social events. Previous analyses of emojis reported that people use positive emojis more frequently than negative emojis. However, psychological research reveals a negativity bias in sentiment, as seen in the phenomenon of loss-aversion, where negative sentiment due to a loss possesses a greater psychological valence than positive sentiment due to a gain of an equal amount. We propose that the frequency and intensity of emojis are dissociable. Whereas the frequency of emojis reflects social norms in public communication, the intensity reflects hedonic values and loss-aversion. We first developed a text-free emoji sentiment lexicon based on a survey with more than 900 users of Weibo (a Chinese version of Twitter). Using the sentiment lexicon, we then analyzed 8822 Weibo comments containing the indexed emojis in reaction to three controversial events (i.e., a murder case in which public opinion largely opposed the final verdict, a manslaughter case in which public opinion was supportive of the final verdict, and a public debate on an award-winning subject). The results showed that positive or negative emoji frequency was consistent with the majority sentiment (social norm) towards a controversial event. In contrast, the average intensity of negative emojis was stronger than positive emojis across all three samples, revealing a public sentiment version of loss-aversion. In all three samples, emoji polarity analysis served as a proxy for text sentiment analysis to capture public attitudes towards a social event.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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