Is it time for libraries to take a closer look at emoji? The data deluge column

摘要

The emoji, is it an endearing image to add to your text messages and email, or is it an increasingly important type of electronic data? According to a 2013 article by Jeff Blagdon, the idea of using some sort of symbol in electronic communication has been with us for about two decades. Japanese in origin, the earliest symbols of this type were developed in the era of pagers and old-style cell phones and were commonly called emoticons. The emoticons were created by using the characters available on the typical QWERTY computer keyboard. Readers likely are familiar with this type of representation which included the famous smiley face, which is created by using the colon and closed parentheses keys. As devices developed a greater capacity to display graphical elements, these keystroke representations were replaced with Unicode characters which display on our electronic devices, which we now call emoji. This instalment of the data deluge will look at the emoji as a form of data and explore how and why their ubiquity may create new opportunities for libraries.