Emoji – Brief History, Current Impact on eDiscovery & What Lies Ahead

Emoji - Sentiment Analysis

Context is key to understanding the emotion or meaning that messages with emoji are intended to carry. However, emoji differ from text or individual words in that they can express emotional communication without accompanying text, and can also facilitate the communication of subtle emotional cues such as irony, sarcasm and playfulness, that may be difficult to communicate using traditional text-based communication. For example, the message “you deserve it” could be intended positively or negatively, but an accompanying emoji could help clarify the emotional content of this text. Consider if this phrase were to be followed by a smiley face or balloon, you might conclude it was sent with positive intent; however, if the phrase were to be followed by an angry face or a balance scale, perhaps the message was sent with negative intent.

Recent findings have demonstrated that emoji contain necessary information to interpret the emotional and semantic content of digital communication accurately and effectively. However, to date, the vast majority of research that has examined this emotional content has failed to incorporate emoji into their analyses. This is likely the result of a dearth of standardized tools available to researchers to evaluate the contribution of emoji in modern communication.

The original or primary emoji lexicon developed for sentiment analysis purposes was created by Novak et al. (2015) and involved human raters that classified tweets as positive, negative, or neutral. Sentiment scores for each emoji’s positivity and negativity were calculated as the proportion of tweets containing the emoji were rated as positive and negative. This approach is still widely used, but today, researchers are investigating, through the use of newly developed Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools for emotion detection, the ability to create a more expansive lexicon, such as one that could factor 8 basic human emotions, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy, sadness, surprise, anticipation & trust in addition to positivity and negativity, when analyzing text that include emoji.

One particular study that extrapolated data from Twitter on 3 separate dates over a 17-month period found that emoji are an important component of nonverbal, emotional communication, and led to the creation of an emoji lexicon that can be used independently or in conjunction with existing sentiment analysis tools. This particular emoji lexicon contains 359 of the most commonly used emoji and provides sentiment numerical ratings for each. It is worth noting that the impressive stability over time of this newly developed emoji lexicon, despite a rapidly evolving landscape of digital communication, supports its viability, or for that matter any new lexicon, to retain relevance and utility in the future. More fascinating insights regarding this research can be accessed directly from this link.

This study also raised another important point pertaining to the sentiment analysis of emoji. Beyond the variation in an emoji’s meaning that can be caused by different devices and software, or the dynamic of time due to factors such as the political climate and social trends, there are 4 other variables that can alter the meaning of an emoji as it relates to legal matters. All 6 are listed below for ease of reference:

1. Variation of emoji across platforms, including devices, operating systems, software programs and clients;
2. Variation due to time.
3. Variation across social groups.
4. Linguistic-cultural variation.
5. Variation in court cases under different rules of evidence.
6. Variation in individual participants.

Emoji are dynamic symbols with context and interpreter-dependent meaning. For this reason, it is suggested that legal professionals take efforts to untangle and weave historical, social, cultural and legal contexts into the interpretation of an emoji’s meaning.

To further this point, below are a few examples of how emoji may be interpreted differently:

• First, we can consider the gun emoji, which historically has been represented differently across platforms, but today, is by and large represented as a water-pistol image. This was not always the case as increased gun violence in recent years, particularly in the United States, has driven a global change in the representation of the gun emoji, which unintentionally, can be impactful to a case if this emoji is not represented exactly as it was communicated.
• Another example to consider is the fact that a thumb emoji can represent two very different meanings – it can be used to provide a polite response or acknowledgement, and it can also be used to provide assent, approval or encouragement. This stark difference has been evident in various court rulings, most recently in a matter last month in which the court found that a “thumbs up” emoji can constitute an electronic signature.
• Cultural differences can impact the intended meaning of emoji as well. One example of this variation type relates to the monkey emoji, which in the US can receive a derogatory perception due deeply embedded racism in the American culture; whereas, in China, this emoji is likely to be perceived positively since monkeys in the Chinese culture are well-liked and generally considered clever and playfully naughty.

• One final instance that underscores how social groups can alter the meaning of emoji involves a recent warning issued by the Narcotics Department of Ohio, in which emoji are reportedly being used in connection with drug activity. This use of emoji tends to refer to the physical, psychological, or physiological characteristics of the referenced drugs. For example, a peeled banana is used to refer to oxycodone/Percocet, a step ladder for alprazolam/Xanax, a snail for fentanyl, and a palm tree for marijuana.

  Emoji are also used by this community in generic ways, such as the use of an electrical outlet plug to refer to a drug dealer, or the use of a concert ticket stub emoji to symbolize the price of a drug. Other general references include a flame, gasoline pump, or goat to depict the high potency of a drug, and an astronaut, rocket, or face with an exploding brain to describe the euphoria of drug use.

There are many contextual constraints that can impact an emoji’s meaning that collectively cause interpretative challenges for legal decision-making. However, as evidenced by the emoji lexicon referenced in this article, experts in this field are making great strides at developing solutions that can evolve and scale with emoji’s changing landscape.