S. Chairunnisa and B. A.S. (2017) Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 4, Issue-2: 120-126
DOI: 10.3126/ijssm.v4i2.17173
Full text of this paper can be downloaded online at www.ijssm.org/ &http://nepjol.info/index.php/IJSSM/issue/archive
Analysis of Emoji and Emoticon Usage in Interpersonal Communication of
Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp Application User
Sabrina Chairunnisa* and Benedictus A.S.
Communication Science, Pelita Harapan University, DKI Jakarta, Indonesia
*Corresponding author email: sab[email protected]
Abstract
The aims of this research are: 1) to know the display of emoji and emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
application, 2) to know the usage of emoji and emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp application on interpersonal
communication, and 3) to know the role of emoji and emoticon usage on interpersonal communication. In this research, the
method used was qualitative research method. This research was based on media richness theory. Through the communication
channel, the message will have high noise level so that it could be conveyed perfectly. Research results showed that emoji and
emoticon have very important role in interpersonal communication. In media richness theory, Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp media had fulfilled the criteria. 1) Ability of communication channel in conveying message signals such as facial
expression, body movement, and vocal inflection; 2) Feedbacks are directly given by the message receiver as response to every
chats, 3) Variety of language such as the presence of symbols and foreign language, and 4) Ability of communication channel
in conveying personality such as showing personal emotion. This research concluded that emoji and emoticon have important
role in interpersonal communication to enhance the text message’s meaning.
Keywords: emoji; emoticon; interpersonal communication; Blackberry Messenger; WhatsApp
Introduction
Humans basically needs to communicate in order to support
their lives as social creature. Every day, humans have verbal
communication as well as non-verbal communication.
Communications are nowadays supported by rapidly
developing technology since the inventions of telephone,
computer, telegram, and any other communication tools.
Presently, Smartphone had invented as the most used
technology in communication. The development of
communication technology gives us possibility not to be
face to face when delivering information to the other. The
usage of communication technology had been increasing
every year since Smartphone could ease the
communication. The renewal of technology also makes the
communication a lot easier. Internet and Global System for
Mobile Communications (GSM) are the main networks that
support the communication through Smartphone.
Supporting applications for communication is also
renewing in line with the development of Smartphone
technology. Android as Smartphone operating system has
many supporting applications to ease communication
between its user such as Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp. WhatsApp has popularity of 1 billion
downloads, meanwhile Blackberry Messenger has the
popularity of 100 million downloads throughout the world.
Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp have many users
because they are easy to use and offer complete features.
Interpersonal communication is the most commonly used
communication in conveying a message. Although
interpersonal communication should be done face to face,
but small researches showed that interpersonal
communication could also be done by using media (Sun et
al., 2011). Interpersonal communications are not only done
by meeting the people directly because nowadays media
and technology had been rapidly developing. In
communication, people are hoping that the other person
could understand their feelings, ideas, impressions, and
messages. The developed technology could support those
communication objectives without being face to face with
the other by the presence of emoticon or emoji facility.
Those emoticons and emojis could show our present
condition. For example, a sad person could send sad face
emoji so the others could understand the condition of the
sender.
Research Article
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S. Chairunnisa and B. A.S. (2017) Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 4, Issue-2: 120-126
Full text of this paper can be downloaded online at www.ijssm.org/ &http://nepjol.info/index.php/IJSSM/issue/archive
Emoji was first invented in Japan on 1990s and then it began
to develop from the product of Apple Iphone until Android
and spread to various social Medias (Miller et al., 2016).
Emoji and emoticon facilities are present in Blackberry
Messenger and WhatsApp since they were launched.
Emoticon or emoji is a chat facility presented in messenger
such as Blackberry Messenger or WhatsApp in form of icon
or image that shows expressions like sad, happy, shocked,
impressed, scared, and so on. Emoji could also be called as
facial emotion, or combination of keyboard characters
expressed along with a text message that shows the writer’s
mood (Crystal, 2001). Emoticon is symbol typography or
the combination of symbols that shows the mood,
resembling facial expression, or in form of particular
activity. It is used as non verbal communication and
emotion substitutes for text based message (Walther and
D’Addario, 2001).
Blackberry Messanger is one of instant messaging
application that could be used to send messages in form of
text, image, video, location map, recording, voice call, and
video call. To use Blackberry Messenger, a stable and fast
connection of internet is needed especially in making voice
call or video call. A stable and fast connection of internet is
needed so that the message delivery will not be interrupted.
WhatsApp is also an instant messaging application that
could be used to send text messages, recording, voice call,
video call, and location map (helped by Google Maps). It
also could attach various files such as images, document,
video, and music. The development of technology makes it
possible that an application has complete features for
communication. To support Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp application, the users should have internet
connection. Both Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
need a stable connection and data package on Smartphone.
WhatsApp has facilities that enable its user to send text
message freely without the presence of data package, but
the process will take slower. The other way of
communication that could be used in Blackberry Messenger
and WhatsApp is by making group with the facility
provided by those applications. By using group facility, the
users could communicate with a number of people at once.
From the statement that already been described, the research
problems are as follows: 1) how is the display of emoji and
emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
application? 2) How is the usage of emoji and emoticon on
interpersonal communication in Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp application? And 3) how is the role of emoji and
emoticon usage on interpersonal communication?
The aims of this research are: 1) to know the display of
emoji and emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp application, 2) to know the usage of emoji and
emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
application on interpersonal communication, and 3) to
know the role of emoji and emoticon usage on interpersonal
communication.
The significance of this research are: 1) Know the display
of emoji and emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp application, 2) Know the correct way to use
emoji and emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and
WhatsApp application, 3) Know the difference of emoji and
emoticon in Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
application, and 4) Know the usage of emoji and emoticon
for effective interpersonal communication.
Literature Review
Emoji and Emoticon
Most of messenger applications including Blackberry
Messenger and WhatsApp have emoji and emoticon
facility. Before the development of technology, emoticon is
just in form of symbol such as ;) that shows happy
expression. Emoji and emoticon nowadays had been
developed into a figure like and even have different color
and interesting shapes. Although the shapes of emoji and
emoticon are different but the emotions expressed through
them can show various emotions of its user.
Emoji can be described as graphic symbols or ideogram that
not only shows facial expression but also wider concepts
and ideas such as celebrations, weathers, vehicles and
buildings, food and drinks, animals and plants, emotions,
feelings, and activities (Novak et al., 2015). Emoticon can
also be described as emotion used in text communication
such as smile (Dresner and Herring, 2010). Emoticon is
short character that use punctuation symbols in text
message (Novak et al., 2015) and depicting emotional form
in non-verbal language (Derks et al., 2018). From those
definitions, it can be concluded that emoji is an image that
could express facial expression, including wider concepts
and ideas such as building shapes, celebrations, food and
drinks, animal, plants, and etc. Emoticon could also be
concluded as text symbol that show facial expression in
form of face icons.
From the statements that had been described before, it can
be concluded that emoji is an image in form of colored icon
of facial emotions, animal emotions, plants, vehicles, and
etc. Meanwhile, emoticon is the collection of some symbols
that form facial emotions in text messages.
Interpersonal Communication
Communication is derived from Latin word “communicare”
that means “to share” or “to make common” (Coates, 2009).
In this context, sharing or making common means to share
information or message that could be received by other
people. Communication is the process of conveying
message or information from one to another (Keyton,
2011). Communication happens when it fulfills some
elements (Cheney, 2011) as depicted in Fig. 1.
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Fig. 1: Communication Process
Fig. 1 explains that the main element of communication is
message sender and message receiver. Message sender
sends the message directly (face-to-face) or through a
particular media like telephone, internet, telegram,
computer, or any other communication supporting media.
The use of media in communication tends to be disturbed,
such as network interference when using internet. From the
statements above, communication can be defined as a
process of conveying message done by two or more people,
involving message sender and message receiver and
subsequently induce a feedback.
Interpersonal communication is a communication that
usually done by two individuals. Interpersonal
communication is usually based on an intimacy of formality
to someone (McLean and Moman, 2012). Other argument
states that interpersonal communication is a communication
that involved two to three people (Wood, 2014).
From those definitions, it can be concluded that
interpersonal communication is a process of conveying
message done by two people involving message sender and
message receiver that induce feedbacks from those people.
Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp
Blackberry Messenger is an application provided in
Playstore that can be usedto chatby text, voice call, or video
call. Blackberry Messenger can also be used to share photo,
send a location, broadcasting, multi personal chatting, and
group chatting. To be able to use this application, users
should have internet connection in their Smart phones
(www.blackberry.com). WhatsApp is a chat application as
well as Blackberry Messenger that runs by the presence of
internet connection (4G/LTE, 3G, 2G, Edge, or Wifi). The
difference is that not every operator asks an additional
charge to send a message through this application when the
data package is empty. WhatsApp can be installed in
numerous Smart phones like Android, iPhone, Windows
Phone, and some types of Nokia phone. WhatsApp can also
be used to send text messages, phone calls, video calls,
making group, and send various files such as images,
videos, recordings, music, and locations.
Research Method
This research used qualitative research method with some
samples to strengthen the research results. A qualitative
research is done by constructing reality and understanding
its meaning (Somantri, 2005). Qualitative research method
was chosen because of the limitation of research,
incomplete data, or insufficient research variables (Yin,
2011). Qualitative research originated from the depth,
nuance, context, multidiscipline, and complexity. The result
of qualitative research could be derived from valid findings
through comparison and conclusion (Kumar, 2011). This
research used media richness theory, which states that
through communication channel a conveyed message has
high noise level so that by this theory the message can be
conveyed perfectly (Daft and Lengel, 1984).
Result and Discussion
Through media richness theory, this research results
showed that emoji and emoticon have a very important role
in interpersonal communication. In media richness theory,
Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp fulfill the criteria of:
1) Ability of communication channel in conveying message
signals such as facial expression, body movement, and
vocal inflection; 2) Feedbacks are directly given by the
message receiver as response to every chats, 3) Variety of
language such as the presence of symbols and foreign
language, and 4) Ability of communication channel in
conveying personality such as showing personal emotion
(Daft and Lengel, 1984).
Through chat trials with a number of WhatsApp users, the
use of emoji in WhatsApp can be shown on Fig. 2.
Through three different chats shown in Figure 2, it can be
concluded that emoji or emoticons are indeed can be used
to strengthen the message content. By using emoji, the
message sender can express emotions through pictures
available on their Smart phones. Angry, sad, happy,
disappointed, shocked, or any other emotions can be
expressed in form of a picture. But the expression of
emotion through emoji is not always correct. For example,
an angry girl will not always use angry emoji to express her
feeling. She can use other emoji to cover the real feeling so
that the message receiver wouldn’t be guilty.
Emoji and emoticon can strengthen the meaning of sent
message so that the receiver will feel the emotion of
message sender. In message delivery, an emoticon can
make the difference. With an emoji or emoticon, a message
can have more extreme emotion (Ip, 2002). An emoji can
also help to express thoughts and feelings by using digital
media with universally known facial expression (Mesquita
et al., 1997). Emoji or emoticon should be used in suitable
message so that the message can have stronger emotion and
represent the sender’s emotion (Stark and Crawford, 2015).
Emoticon is an icon with facial emotion shape which is
usually used in text message to represent emotion and
personality in interpersonal communication (Dunlap et al.,
2016). By the use of emoji, the emotion of message receiver
will be triggered more strongly, and furthermore
understanding the message meaning (Luminet et al., 2000).
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S. Chairunnisa and B. A.S. (2017) Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 4, Issue-2: 120-126
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Fig. 2: The Use of Emoji in WhatsApp
Display of Emoji and Emoticon in Blackberry Messenger
and WhatsApp
Emoji is an emoticon which resembles someone’s facial
expression or other images such as buildings, vehicles,
plants, animals, weathers, and etc. Meanwhile, emoticon is
a symbol that forms emotion.
Emoji in Blackberry Messenger shown in Fig. 3 was taken
from screenshot of researcher’s Android Smartphone in
February 24th, 2017. The application version was Version
3.2.5.12. The emoji consist of facial expressions, animal’s
facial expressions, body parts, vehicles, sports equipment,
plants, and etc.
Emoji in WhatsApp shown in Fig. 4 was taken from
screenshot of researcher’s Android Smartphone in February
24th, 2017. The application version was 2.17.24. The emoji
consist of facial emotions, plants and animals, sports, food
and drink, vehicles, symbols, multimedia, and nations’
flags. Different with Blackberry Messenger, WhatsApp ’s
emoji are grouped according to the icon’s shapes and makes
it easier for user to pick. Besides that, WhatsApp emoji is
more various than Blackberry Messenger’s.
Fig.3: Emoji of Blackberry Messenger
Emoticon is the combination of emotion and icons that
creates a funny and unique emoticon. The emoticon shown
in Fig. 5 was taken from www.piliapp.com that provides
various emoji and emoticon. Emoticon can also be used in
every Smartphone because each of them had prepared with
symbols needed to make emoticon.
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Fig.4: Emoji in WhatsApp
Fig. 5: Emoticon
The Correct Usage of Emoji and Emoticon in Blackberry
Messenger and WhatsApp
Emoji and emoticon are used to strengthen the message so
that the receiver will understand the condition or emotion of
message sender. Table 1 shows the types of emoticon and
their usage ratio from the research result of Maíz-Arévalo
(2015).
Table 1: Types of Emoticon and Usage Frequency
Type of emoticon
Smiley []
Wink [;-)]
Laughter [:-D]
Tongue out [:-p]
Emoji [^^]
Thinking emoticon [:^)]
Tired emoticon ([=_=)]
Total
Emoticon is frequently used in positive messages such as
thankfulness, compliment, regards, etc (Brown and
Levinson, 1987) as follows:
1. Okay, Agreed: D
2. Thank you for helping my work :)
3. You are great, you can do your work faster ;)
4. See you ^^
5. Thank you so much :D or ^^
Some examples above show that emoticon can strengthen
the positive text message. The usage of negatively oriented
emoticon is rarely seen because an angry person tends to
bother making an emoticon with his present emotion.
The usage of emoji in the research shows that respondents
who are given a statement to add an emoji in the sentence
“you are late ...” 46% of them fill it with angry emoji (Kelly,
2015).
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From the research result it can be concluded that emoji or
emoticon is frequently used to strengthen the message or as
feedback to the message. If the message sender gives
compliment by text message, he/she can add supporting
emoji or emoticon so that the message receiver will feel the
emotion effect. For example see Fig. 6.
Fig. 6: The Correct Usage of Emoji
Fig. 6 explains that emoji will strengthen the given emotion
so that the emotion effect will duplicate. By understanding
each other’s emotion, the communication process will run
well.
The Role of Emoji and Emoticon Usage in Interpersonal
Communication
Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp are frequently used
applications to connect with close friends and family
(Church and Oliveira, 2013). According to media richness
theory, there are four factors that determine good delivery
of message: 1) Ability of communication channel in
conveying message signals such as facial expression, body
movement, and vocal inflection; 2) Feedbacks are directly
given by the message receiver as response to every chats, 3)
Variety of language such as the presence of symbols and
foreign language, and 4) Ability of communication channel
in conveying personality such as showing personal emotion
(Daft and Lengel, 1984). In interpersonal communication,
the usage of nonverbal symbols such as facial expression
and body movement could make the message clearer (Cui
et al., 2017). Responded nonverbal symbols will support
feedback in form of other emotion. The essence of media
richness theory is language and symbol (Littlejohn, 1983).
Clear language and supporting symbol will make
interpersonal communication in a media runs well as
expected.
Research result showed exclusively that sending text
message with emoticon will create information richness so
that the receiver feel the effect of received message (Hsieh
and Tseng, 2015). In interpersonal communication,
emoticon’s role is increasing the connection with other
person in chat, showing emotion expression, and as a
strategy to show present condition (Maíz-Arévalo, 2015).
Brain is 60000 fold faster in responding pictures than
ordinary text, so a picture is an important element in
interpersonal communication (Jibril and Abdullah, 2013).
From the research result, it could be known that emoji and
emoticon is highly needed in interpersonal communication
through digital technology. The role of emoji and emoticon
is to support the message meaning. The usage of emoji or
emoticon should match with the message. For example, a
warning message should use angry emoji or emoticon
instead of happy ones.
Conclusion
Emoji or emoticon is an icon or picture that can support
message's meaning. The usage of emoji and emoticon is
needed in interpersonal communication to strengthen the
message meaning so that it can be easily understood.
According to media richness theory, Blackberry Messenger
and WhatsApp had fulfilled the element of media richness
as follows: 1) ability of communication channel in
conveying message signals such as facial expression, body
movement, and vocal inflection; 2) feedbacks are directly
given by the message receiver as response to every chats, 3)
variety of language such as the presence of symbols and
foreign language, and 4) ability of communication channel
in conveying personality such as showing personal emotion.
The usage of symbol and language is highly needed in
communication to make it effective and understandable.
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