Emoji is word of the year 2015- here is where to find more research

Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2015 is emoji
The official blog has some background on the origins of the word and why it was chosen.
 but what do you know about emojis?

Here are some other useful sources for academic research

Emoji's are 'pictographs. Originally used in Japanese electronic messages, many characters have now been incorporated into Unicode 

 Emoji and communication
A recent study by Professor V. Evans, from Bangor University, concluded that it is the fastest growing language in the UK with over 80% using it. Amongst 18-25 year olds, 72% even found it easier to communicate emotions using symbols rather than words. Try his website for a fun video on how to be a master as well as other papers on the linguistics of emoji 


A recent debate from ABC radio which featured linguist Ben Zimmer and Fred Benenson, who 'translated Moby Dick into Emoji, gives an introduction to the issues. Tyler Schnoebelen, Stanford University has published a paper examining the uses of noses in messages. He argues that that emoji is a type of language with clear variations in the use of emoticons by age, gender and region. This echoed an earlier paper on text messaging by Chad Tossell et al which found that while women use emoticons more frequently, men use a wider range of images.Neuroscientists such as Owen Churches have also considered how 'smileys' are interpreted by the brain.(LSE access).

· Do Emojis make people happy?
Interestingly a number of researchers have focused on this issue. A University of Missouri-St. Louis study which compared work and social emails containing emoticons found that those containing smiley faces were perceived more positively. An article from the most recent issue of Computers in Human Behavior found that customers who chatted online with agents scored those using emoticons more highly. There have also been studies on their value accepting negative feedback in the workplace .

the conversation blog has discussion of further research
LSE staff/ students can locate recent articles using psychinfo this is available via Ebsco and you can cross search it easily with SocIndex (sociology) Communication and mass media complete, Business source Complete (for discussion of use in marketing)