Using Facebook Emoticons in the Stiudents’ Communication Style

Cyra Jhelle M. Jaravata

Grade 12-B Humanities and Social Sciences
Don Bosco High School

Chapter I

The Problem and Its Background

Introduction

People communicate in two ways either verbally which is the act of sharing

information between individuals throughout using speech, and non-verbally throughout

non-verbal communication which is transmitting the message by mediums other than

speech or writing.

Technological advancement demonstrated a dramatic shift regarding how

individuals communicate in the past few decades. While face-to-face interaction once

dominated the communication landscape, we now live in a time of accelerating change.

Stanford Report (2012) as cited by Adams (2013), concluded that society has

reached an electronic epoch in which individuals communicate utilizing increasingly

sophisticated hardware and software. Numerous applications have enabled video and

audio dialogues to take place remotely using tools such as Skype and Google hangout. In

fact, professors at Stanford have utilized Google hangout to improve collaboration

amongst students separated geographically in countries such as Iran and India. As

bandwidth capabilities continue to expand our ability to transmit data, greater

opportunities to send and receive media-rich messages will progress.

 Emoticons used in non-formal communications used in the social media

continue to evolve from simple to complex and has grown in number. The young

generation like us are very passionate into it when we talk with anybody and share

something in our social media accounts. It has become a common thing to use them in

text messages, social content and even on profile statuses. They help us express our

feelings much better in our message and content than just a simple text. So, why not use

them if it makes your social media posts more fun, engaging, and interactive?

Krohn (2004), accorded that the emoticon was first used in written text in

1982 by computer scientist Scott E. Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University in the United

States. Fahlman suggested that the keyboard‐based “smiley” face :‐) and the “frowny”

face :‐(could be used to identify jokes in a computer scientist discussion forum. The

overall aim was to economize computer‐mediated interaction.

Johansen (2008), stated his observation that within the last 30 years, emoticons

have developed different forms and meanings, and a growing number of forms

accompany different types of chat software. Still, using emoticons in computer‐mediated

communication (CMC) has traditionally been viewed as a typically teenage phenomenon

and has been associated with young people's chat style on the Internet.

Emoji are used more and more frequently in network communication, and the

way they are used is becoming more and more diversified as well. Researches on emoji

have become a hot topic in the academic field, and more and more scholars from the

fields of computing, communication, marketing, behavioral science and so on are

studying them.

Priddis (2013), commented that prior research suggests that emoticons

enhance text-based messages; yet, critics argue that emoticons negatively affect
credibility. While research purports that teachers utilize emoticons, they feel

uncomfortable doing so.

Bich-Carriere (2019) emoji can help users to convey feelings and understand the

meaning of a text, but the use of emoji also brings ambiguities in the interpretation of

communication, resulting in inefficiency. Although emoji have visual similarity, their interpretation

is influenced by cultural background, technical differences and their own visual characteristics.

This study is devoted in identifying the influence and importance of facebook

emoticons or emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade 12-B Humanities and

Social Sciences (HUMMS) of Don Bosco High School.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims at identifying the influence and importance of facebook

emoticons or emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade 12-B Humanities and

Social Sciences (HUMMS) of Don Bosco High School.

It is occupied to answer the following questions:

1. What is the personal definition of the students of facebook emoticons or

emojis?

2. What is the personal perception of the students on the importance of facebook

emoticons or emojis along:

a. Personal or private communication; and

b. Formal Communication in School?

 3. What are the problems, issues and concerns met by the students in using

facebook emoticons or emojis along:

c. Personal or private communication; and

d. Formal Communication in School?

4. Why do the students suggest or not suggest the use of facebook emoticons or

emojis in communication?

Significance of the Study

This study will merit the following individuals or group of individuals:

Students. The results of this study will introduce the students in the use of

facebook emoticons or emojis as a device in communication, its advantages

and disadvantages.

Parents. The results of this study will make the parents understand why their

children use facebook emoticons or emojis in theoir communication platforms.

Teachers. The results of this study will make the teachers aware of the extent

of usage of facebook emoticons or emojis of the students and how they use

them to convey their messages.

School. The results of this study will make schools aware of the impact in the

use of facebook empoticons or emojis in academic communication and may

become an initial baseline in formulating strategies on how to use them as part

of the learning process in the curriculum.

 Future Researchers. The results of this study will become a basis of the

future researchers in their studies regarding the subject.

Scope and Delimitation

This study will focus to the Grade 12-B HUMMS students at Don Bosco High

School for the School Year 2020-2021.

Tchokni (2008) as cited by Seiter (2015) of the University of Cambridge

Computer Laboratory and her colleagues used various metrics such as number of

followers and Klout score to determine the traits of influential social media

sharers—and emoticons were a common factor.

In identifying the influence and importance of facebook emoticons or emojis

in the communicating styles of the Grade 12 students, a questionnaire-checklist and

interview will be sent through email or messenger to the student-respondents as the

main instruments of this study. A follow-up interview will be done through phone

calls or video chats to clarify the answers vaguely stated in the instrument.

Conceptual and Analytical Framework

The major focus of this study is to identify the influence and importance of

facebook emoticons or emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade 12-B Humanities

and Social Sciences (HUMMS) of Don Bosco High School

 Figure 1 shows the relationship of input variables which contains the influence

and importance of facebook emoticons or emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade

12-B Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMMS) of Don Bosco High School. In the

process is Data Gathering of the Questionnaire Checklist to the Grade 12-B HUMMS

students. The output contains the influence and importance of facebook emoticons or

emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade 12-B HUMMS STUDENTS of Don

Bosco High School.

.
Input Process Output

 Influence and  Data Gathering of the  Assessed Influence

importance of Questionnaire and importance of
Checklist to the Grade facebook
facebook emoticons 12-B HUMMS
or emojis in the emoticons or
students
emojis in the
communicating
 Interview with the communicating
styles of the Grade styles of the Grade
Grade 12-B HUMMS
12-B Humanities students 12-B Humanities
and Social Sciences and Social
(HUMMS) of Don Sciences
Bosco High School. (HUMMS) of Don
Bosco High
School.

FEEDBACK

Figure 1: Paradigm showing the relationship among variables.

 Definition of Terms

Definition of Terms

Computer-mediated communication. It refers to any human communication

that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices.

Communication Style. It refers to a way in which they interact and exchange

information with others.

Emoticons/Emoticons. It refers to digital text icons that visually represent

facial expressions and may indicate the self-reported mood or emotional state

of a user.

Facebook. It refers to an online social networking website where people can

create profiles, share information such as photos and quotes about themselves,

and respond or link to the information posted by others.

Social Media. It refers to websites and applications that enable users to create

and share content or to participate in social networking.

 Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

Review of Related Literature

Ferro (2013) wrote in an Article that Faceboook was encouraged to bring emojis into

life because Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,

a book that catalogued emotional expressions in humans and their link to the animal world. In

the book, Darwin described more than 50 universal emotions. Then, Facebook, with the help

of a psychologist who studies emotions and a Pixar illustrator, has turned some of the

emotions Darwin described in the 19th century into a set of emoticons. The hope: to create

emoticons that better capture the vast range of human emotion. They started looking at how

compassion research could help Facebook address the kind of interpersonal conflicts the

company saw emerge in issue reporting. When people inserted a little more emotion into their

messages asking friends to take down photos, Facebook found, the friend was more likely to

respond or comply rather than just ignore the message.

 Danesi (2016 ) claims that in hieroglyphic drawings you cannot extract emotions as it

was the case in cave drawings, instead you have to go step by step to extract meaning from

all the elements that together make up the message. He goes on to argue that 17300 years

ago in Lasco-France emoticons were used in paintings, such images were like a channel to

which human beings were able to create sense and meaning and to view the world. The

reason behind making emoticons popular was to help various cultures with different

languages to able to communicate with each other and share their emotions, even though this

existed in the ancient world since no one could tell us how to interpret such drawings.

Patel (2027) defined that using emojis is a great way to get the attention of your users

in your social media posts. People are constantly on their phones and computers. There are

always thousands of people scrolling through their Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds.

Therefore, emojis can serve to be a great tool for a marketer to get users' attention toward

their posts.

As non-verbal cues in CMC, emoji are widely used in internet communication. As of

March 2019, there were 3,019 emoji in Unicode, with nearly half of all text messages on

Instagram containing emoji (Dimson, 2015), and 5 billion of them being used daily on

Facebook. In 2015, emoji was named the word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary,

indicating emoji's influence in online communication.

According to the Emoji Consumer Science Team more than 70% of frequent users are

maximum in the age group between 25-29 years. Also more that 70% of the most frequent

total emoji users on the internet are women and only approximately 50% of the most frequent

users are men.

Adams (2013) expressed that emoticons play a role in allowing users to strategically

manage their online impressions. Given that people may intentionally choose when to employ

one, they may enable greater levels of careful impression management compared to face-to
face interaction. Emoticons may make messages more polite and portray pleasant

dispositions. Therefore, teachers may be able to add emoticons to emails to communicate

their social identities. On the other hand, given the unclear ways emoticons interact with

credibility during task-related messages, teachers may be hesitant to adopt them.

In a similar study, Adams also elucidated that one domain in which email has become

especially prevalent is the academic environment. To contact a professor only a few decades

ago, a student needed to visit in-person during scheduled office hours or call via telephone;

nowadays students need only send a simple email. Similarly, rather than constraining course

announcements and information solely to the traditional classroom, instructors can now

broadcast emails to students unrestrained by space and time, thus creating a virtual text-based

environment for classroom content to continue. While many reasons exist to interact via

email, one study reported that teacher-student emails were generally used for utilitarian or

task-related purposes.

Wood (2011) contritely stated that although the benefits of email usage outnumber the

disadvantages, there are some inherent limitations. Due to the ambiguous nature of words a

text-based message void of emotional cues may be misinterpreted or perceived as rude. In

fact, several mediated interaction theories have asserted that text-based messages lack

necessary relational cues.

Review of Related Studies

A study by Emoji Consumer Science Team shows almost 92% of the online

population is using emojis to express themselves. Most notably, this number only seems to be

growing with the introduction of emoji keywords apps. Additionally, there are new mobile

phone features that continue to be developed to help to emojify your text.

 Skovholt (2014) found out in his study that emoticons have assumed a function which

has been hitherto unidentified, namely that of hedges. On the one hand, emoticons soften

speech acts which are threatening to the recipient's negative face (or face‐threatening acts). In

this role, they thus serve to soften directive speech acts such as requests, corrections,

rejections and complaints. On the other hand, emoticons hedge speech acts which are directed

to the recipient's positive face. In this role of strengtheners, they therefore strengthen such

speech acts as thanks, greetings, wishes and appraisals.

Derks, et.al (2008) confirmed that most of the studies on emoticons assume that

emoticons are used to compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication cues, such as

facial expressions, intonation, gestures, and other bodily indicators, in CMC. In other words,

emoticons are perceived as providing support to written communication, in the same way that

visual and body language support face‐to‐face communication.

Duran et.al. (2005) concluded that teachers initiated emails to make class

announcements and set up appointments whereas students initiated emails to clarify, ask

questions, and offer excuses for late assignments.

Mangan (2012) settled that despite the panoply of new and attractive mediated

options, email has persisted as the standard electronic medium used within the academic

environment to connect reliably with students .

Hall and Pennington (2013) implied that use of emoji is also affected by individual

psychological differences of which Settanni and Marengo (2015) confirmed that this has been

shown in research which demonstrates a positive correlation between the frequency of emoji

use among Facebook users and their extraversion and self-monitoring traits and a negative

correlation between positive emoji use and users' emotional distress.

 Adams (2013) stated that while these nascent symbols appear as cartoon-like

representations, they serve a variety of important functions: emoticons affect interactions

positively, influence message meanings, manage impressions, and supplement nonverbal.

Emoticons are also conventional (understood and shared by many), inventional (rhetorically

creative), and work as punctuation enhancers. However, though emoticons may function

strategically to convey emotion, the over-use of emoticons may create a curvilinear effect.

Borycki (2008) and Yoo (2007) both found out in their studies when emoticons were

perceived to be unexpected, perceptions regarding emoticon senders were affected.

Tian et.al. (2018) concluded from their study that there is a reliable correlation

between Facebook reactions and emoji usages, suggesting that emojis can be used to detect

users’ sentiment, if we take into account of contexts where their meanings are modified (used

ironically or for politeness).

Mazzocconi et al. (2016) hypothesized that compared to negative emojis, positive

emojis are more often used not as direct reflection of emojis, but are used (1) ironically in a

negative context, or (2) for politeness reasons (e.g. in a request or disagreement). These uses

are also seen in smiles and laughter in natural dialogue.

Tian et.al.(2018) hypothesized that compared to negative emojis, positive emojis are

more often used not as direct reflection of emojis, but are used (1) ironically in a negative

context, or (2) for politeness reasons (e.g. in a request or disagreement).

Synthesis

Summing it up, emoticons perform a role in online environments similar to the role

that nonverbal facial expressions fulfill in ordinary face-to-face communication such as

smiling or showing empathy. Though they can be short and easy to integrate into one’s
communication, it can be proposed that instructors may benefit from utilizing them in email

correspondence with students. Emoticons may provide the needed emotional context, digital

immediacy, presence, and relational cues needed to improve email perceptions.

Chapter III

Research Methodology

Research Design

This study is a qualitative research which was defined by Bahndari (2020) as a type

that involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to

understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into

a problem or generate new ideas for research.

For this paper, aa descriptive research method was utilized, to obtain the needed

sources and data. This descriptive type of research enables the researchers to achieve the

desired outcome and to obtain first hand data from the respondents to formulate sound

conclusion and recommendation of the study.

 In order to provide accurate findings and a credible recommendation, the research

data were obtained through a questionnaire checklist and distanced oral interview through

phone calls and video calls document analysis.

Research Environment

The common research environment is the Don Bosco High School specifically the

Grade 12-B HUMSS class. The research will be done using distance communication medium

since no face-to-face interaction is allowed.

Respondents of the Study

The respondents in this study are the Grade 12-B Humanities and Social Sciences

(HUMSS) students of Don Bosco High School.

Instrument of the Study

A questionnaire-checklist and interview will be sent through email or messenger to

the student-respondents in order to identify the influence and importance of facebook

emoticons or emojis in the communicating styles of the Grade 12 students, as the main

instruments of this study. Follow-up interviews will be done through phone calls or video

chats to clarify the answers vaguely stated in the instrument.

Data Gathering Procedure

In the course of making this study when restrictions on face-to-face communication

and travel are still implemented, the social media platforms for communication are in

demand. The researcher will resort to electronic mail through the available accounts of the

respondents like google, yahoo and messenger. The questionnaires will be sent to them to fill

out and oral interviews will be done through phone calls or video calls.

Treatment of Data

In this paper, the data were analyzed using qualitative data analysis specifically

discourse analysis defined as an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language

use, or any significant semiotic event.

The researcher will send the questionnaires for the respondents to fill out and oral

interviews will be done through phone calls or video calls. These will be consolidated and

analyzed by the researcher for the deduction of results.