Understanding Emoji Ambiguity in Context: The Role of Text in Emoji-Related Miscommunication

TLDR

Emoji interpretation varies widely, leading to miscommunication, and prior work suggested that contextualizing emoji within natural text could reduce this ambiguity. The study aimed to test whether contextualizing emojis reduces miscommunication and to outline future research directions. We conducted a controlled experiment with 2,482 participants, having them interpret emojis in isolation and across various textual contexts. The results showed that contextualizing emojis does not significantly reduce miscommunication; variability remained similar to isolated interpretation.

Abstract

Recent studies have found that people interpret emoji characters inconsistently, creating significant potential for miscommunication. However, this research examined emoji in isolation, without consideration of any surrounding text. Prior work has hypothesized that examining emoji in their natural textual contexts would substantially reduce potential for miscommunication. To investigate this hypothesis, we carried out a controlled study with 2,482 participants who interpreted emoji both in isolation and in multiple textual contexts. After comparing the variability of emoji interpretation in each condition, we found that our results do not support the hypothesis in prior work: when emoji are interpreted in textual contexts, the potential for miscommunication appears to be roughly the same. We also identify directions for future research to better understand the interplay between emoji and textual context.