On the internet, emojis have really transformed the way we communicate and express ourselves. It’s no wonder why so many people claim emojis to be such a universal means of communication.
But you’ll be amazed at how diverse these little playful picture icons are.
Similar to the likes of any other language across the world today, many different users are creating their own respective emoji favorites and then comprehending those through a cultural lens.
Let’s take the Chinese nation for example, you’ll see the clapping hand emoji to be one that’s adored as much as corn is on TikTok. But similar to any other country’s language, when we talk about the standardization of emojis, things do tend to get a little political.
A lot of critics feel there are not enough emojis that represent minority groups and if there are, it’s just an underrepresentation of them. At the same time, these same critics feel there might be an overrepresentation of the likes of big tech giants that end up purchasing extravagant voting memberships while on board. As a result, so many efforts to enhance representation are being dubbed as a huge controversy.
Keeping all of this aside, have you ever wondered what it’s like to have a booming type of communication that does not make use of words. Instead, all you have are emojis that say so much but nothing at all.
To help this study get the answer to which emojis are the most popular in which countries, the researchers ended up taking a look at geotagged tweets that arose in different nations around the globe. This would provide insight into which emojis were popular in which destination and so on.
What you end up with is a map of results and it’s sometimes great because you really do wish to visualize what you intend on saying, right?
Summarizing the key findings for this report, we saw how so many different nations either end up laughing or sending love. So no guess that the red heart and the face with crying tears were used the most as the most common emojis around the globe.
In fact, the laughing face with crying tears is the most commonly seen in at least 75 nations. Then we saw how emojis linked to Wordle were quite popular in the US, making up an integral part of its list of top 10 emojis.
Another interesting point worth a mention is how emojis aren’t universal and in places like China, you’ll often find the emoji comprising of clapping hands making a suggestion of taking part in making love. Similarly, a thumbs up in places like Greece may cause people to be suspended.
In all of North America, the laughing face with crying tears is the most widely used emoji out there. It’s the same for apps like Instagram and Facebook. On the other hand, in South America, people are more patriotic and tend to release their flag as an emoji, more than anything else. But if we had to pick one, stats showed how the red heart is used the most.
The same goes for Europe where people love their flags but if not, red hearts and laughing faces take the lead. When looking at the Middle Eastern region, it’s interesting to see how sending a heart in countries like Saudi Arabia might be dubbed as a crime for harassment.
Other Asian nations like Japan prefer to use their own local emojis such as those pertaining to dragons or specific local candies more than anything else. But the majority of Asia prefer the red heart and their local flags more than anything else.
Take a look at below infographics fore more insights:
H/T:
Crossword Solver
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World
