Over the last year or so, I've heard about various debates regarding emojis. Ususally, these conversations revolve around the ever declining linguistic capabilities of millenials or how it's racist for most emoji people to be white. What I haven't heard, however, is that behind a crying face or dancing girl is a capitalist endeavor. The fact that the Emoji Subcommittee even exists suggests that something most people think of as a cute or funny add-ons is political. As Berdugo points out, members of the committee who can afford voting rights are companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, and even divisions of foreign governments. Emojis are not only profitable, but political. While part of this does align with the Unicode Consortium's goals of consistent representation by ensuring that emojis are interpretated the same way through code, it reveals a much larger issue.
Accepting and denying ideas for emojis is one more way for corporations to decide who has the right to speak. It might not be quite on the same level as issues of national security or human injustice, but it serves as one more way that large corporations are able to influence people. By limiting the ways we can express ourselves, even through these "creative" means, they play a role in both what we think and how we are able to think about it.
In my research, I found and read this article. While to someone who doesn't know much about the world of emoticons, emojis, and Unicode, it seems like such a strange and bizarre idea to have a committee vote and decide upon the inclusion of emoji, but after weeks of research on these topics, I find that this is probably the best way to do it. The thing that is emphasized in this article, and perhaps not stressed enough in this article, is that Unicode is IT. It is the governing body on the standardized text we use today ACROSS THE WHOLE WORLD -- not just the USA or North America or a few countries, THE WHOLE WORLD. The people on this committee make decisions that influence the entire world's standardized text.
While I think the article gives an interesting look into the committee, the decision-making process, and the strange politics of Unicode, I think the bigger story at hand is the actual inclusion of emojis into Unicode. The decision to include them and make decisions at to what stays and goes implies that emojis are so immensely popular worldwide that this committee for standards of text considers these emojis to be essential to text. It is so interesting to me because emojis are pictograms. They are images and not text or letters or punctuation (though often times they serve to punctuate sentiments, as I have found in my research), and yet Unicode has deemed them essential for communicating in the modern world and they have now become a part of our digital lexicon. To take it a step further, other institutions are acknowledging emojis as a part of contemporary speech. For example, The Oxford Dictionaries gave a nod toward emojis by selected "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji as the word of the year. I think it is a very strange and interesting word we live in where we have begun to include pictograms into standardized text.
Over the last year or so, I've heard about various debates regarding emojis. Ususally, these conversations revolve around the ever declining linguistic capabilities of millenials or how it's racist for most emoji people to be white. What I haven't heard, however, is that behind a crying face or dancing girl is a capitalist endeavor. The fact that the Emoji Subcommittee even exists suggests that something most people think of as a cute or funny add-ons is political. As Berdugo points out, members of the committee who can afford voting rights are companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, and even divisions of foreign governments. Emojis are not only profitable, but political. While part of this does align with the Unicode Consortium's goals of consistent representation by ensuring that emojis are interpretated the same way through code, it reveals a much larger issue.
ReplyDeleteAccepting and denying ideas for emojis is one more way for corporations to decide who has the right to speak. It might not be quite on the same level as issues of national security or human injustice, but it serves as one more way that large corporations are able to influence people. By limiting the ways we can express ourselves, even through these "creative" means, they play a role in both what we think and how we are able to think about it.
In my research, I found and read this article. While to someone who doesn't know much about the world of emoticons, emojis, and Unicode, it seems like such a strange and bizarre idea to have a committee vote and decide upon the inclusion of emoji, but after weeks of research on these topics, I find that this is probably the best way to do it. The thing that is emphasized in this article, and perhaps not stressed enough in this article, is that Unicode is IT. It is the governing body on the standardized text we use today ACROSS THE WHOLE WORLD -- not just the USA or North America or a few countries, THE WHOLE WORLD. The people on this committee make decisions that influence the entire world's standardized text.
ReplyDeleteWhile I think the article gives an interesting look into the committee, the decision-making process, and the strange politics of Unicode, I think the bigger story at hand is the actual inclusion of emojis into Unicode. The decision to include them and make decisions at to what stays and goes implies that emojis are so immensely popular worldwide that this committee for standards of text considers these emojis to be essential to text. It is so interesting to me because emojis are pictograms. They are images and not text or letters or punctuation (though often times they serve to punctuate sentiments, as I have found in my research), and yet Unicode has deemed them essential for communicating in the modern world and they have now become a part of our digital lexicon. To take it a step further, other institutions are acknowledging emojis as a part of contemporary speech. For example, The Oxford Dictionaries gave a nod toward emojis by selected "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji as the word of the year. I think it is a very strange and interesting word we live in where we have begun to include pictograms into standardized text.