Expressing emotions in Computer-mediated communication is less social because of the lack of nonverbal cues unlike regular face-to-face communication. The use of emoticons or icons for visualizing emotions may be employed to replicate nonverbal facial expressions in CMC. This present research examined to what extent the use of emoticons (emotion icons) depends on social context (2: task-oriented vs. socio-emotional) and emotional valence (3: positive vs. neutral vs. negative). Participants were asked to type freely messages on mobile prototype with emoticons or without for six different scenarios. Results showed that there is a trend of kind of context. That is, participants used more emoticons in task-oriented than in socio-emotional social contexts. Furthermore, subjects reacted significantly more often with an emoticon in positive valence than in neutral or negative valence. An interaction was found between valence and kind of context. These results seemed in line with the social norms in face-to-face communication. We present implications with a empirical experiment that the use of emoticons in social interaction on the mobile.
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