The Misuse of Emojis in Social Media: The Case of Kurdish Facebook Users

Abstract

Writing in online platforms does not have the animate qualities of face-to-face interactions. In a real context, people use body language, gestures, and facial expressions. These show different thoughts and emotions of the speaker to the listener. In the digital medium, lack of the above-mentioned qualities has resulted in creating an anonymous, vague and cold socialization. The invention of kaomoji, emoticon, and emoji was a unique step toward solving the issues in online writing. It was a step to make digital writing animate and alive. As there are different gestures, body language movements, and facial expressions, the same is true about having different emojis. There are thousands of emojis, and a lot of Kurdish Facebook users do not know where, when and how to use them. The misuse of emojis create misunderstandings on the level of language and socialization, between the addresser and the addressee. This study tried to understand the factors behind misusing emojis among Kurdish Facebook users. In this regard, there are a selected number of emojis used by Kurdish users to express their modes of feelings and thoughts in all circumstances. In most cases, the selected emoji does not fit the topic of the sender or vice versa. To tackle the current issue under consideration, ten visual documents are taken from the posts of Kurdish Facebook users in the year of 2021 in Erbil and Sulaimani, Iraq. These posts express different social situations. The researchers used Microsoft Excel to analyze the collected data statistically. To interpret the misuse of emojis, they used C. S. Pierce’s theory of signs. The results of the current study demonstrate that most users fail to select a right emoji for the situation under consideration. Mostly, their use of emojis are not accurate and relevant. Of course, this misuse creates problems for both sides, the addresser and the addressee. The researchers recommend that Kurdish users should know the reasons behind their emoji selection, otherwise they should not use them. The same scenario is true for educational settings. Finally, the researchers present their recommendations for the educational institutions in order to avoid these issues of miscommunication.