Özet:

A particular word or feeling can be expressed visually by emojis that can be called one of the visual languages of communication in the digital environment. It is possible to say that emotions show similar characteristics to the hieroglyphs, which are a primary way of communication; however, the use of them in the digital environment has also brought a variety of problems. For example, factors such as gender, age, cultural differences can create differences in the use and perception of emojis. This situation also shows the possibility that emojis that need to support written expression may occasionally lead to communication losses. In order to investigate such losses, the 227 students who are ongoing training at the Anatolian University Communications Faculty with 20 material emoji use surveys were attempted to identify the consistency of the emoji uses of the participants and the meanings they load on the emoji. For this purpose, the use and understanding of emojis has been assessed by the analysis of the factors in terms of gender and frequency of social media use and by the dimensions of positive experience, communication discontinuity, insufficiency, perceptive differences, negative experience and intimity. As a result, in terms of gender, participants have similar opinions in the dimensions of positive experiences, communication discontinuity, insufficiency, perceptive differences, negative experiences and intimacy; in terms of preference, social media use frequency, participants have different opinions only in the dimensions of positive experiences. These findings are expected to be a guide to professionals and researchers working in the communication field for subsequent studies.

Özet:

A specific word or feeling can be expressed by emojis which can be called as one of the visual languages of communication for the digital media. It is possible to say that emojis show similar features with hieroglyphs which being a primitive mode of communication; but, using in digital media, it may bring various problems. For instance, factors such as gender, age, cultural differences, using habits and perception of emojis can vary from person to person. This situation also shows the possibility that the emojis which are expected to support the written statement, may also cause communication losses from time to time. In an attempt to analyze such losses, twenty-point usage emojis questionnaire was conducted with 227 students, who are continuing their formal education at the Communication Faculty of Anadolu University, we tried to determine the participants' usage of emojis and cohesion of meaning attribution in emojis. In accordance with this purpose, the using and meaning of emojis are analyzed by factor analysis in terms of gender and social media usage frequency; was evaluated according to positive experience, lack of communication, inadequacy, perceptual difference, negative experience and sincerity. As a consequence, in terms of gender, the participants have similar opinions on positive experience, lack of communication, inadequacy, perceptual difference, negative experience and sincerity; in terms of social media usage frequency it is seen that they have only different opinions on the positive experience dimension. It is expected that this work will be a guide to the professionals and researchers working in the field of communication for subsequent studies.

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