Abstract:
Emojis are graphic symbols used to express concepts and ideas, Emoji roles have grown rapidly through their use in social tools of digital written communication. The use of emojis on digital platforms often results to misunderstandings among gender and cross-cultural differences. The primary concern of this research is to investigate gender and cross-cultural differences and how the emoji users interpret it on online platforms more specifically on Instagram. The study objectives were to investigate cross- cultural variation on emoji misinterpretation among USIU students, to examine the efficiency use of emojis on online engagement among USIU students, to determine the influence of Instagram as a technological affordance platform on emoji use among USIU Africa students and to determine the moderating effect of gender and age in shaping the use of emojis in online engagement on Instagram among USIU students. Use of emojis was seen to be compounded by geographical location and cultures which exposes emoji use to misinterpretations. Further, emojis enable one to communicate their intentions, add spice to posts and help communicate emotions as opposed to just using words. Some emojis like laugh emojis were found to be easy to use, while others bring some misunderstanding. Majority of the respondents reported that it was easy to use emojis on Instagram. Instagram as a platform is used because of its visibility features, and the ease of editing words with emojis where necessary. Further, people (especially female Instagram users) are learning ways of saving posts for later viewing. While probed further, Age and Gender influence emoji use differently. Females use emojis more, and there are also some misunderstandings that accrue from gendered use of emojis. Older populations were reportedly experiencing problems with emoji use and younger people avoid using emojis while communicating with older people. This study thus recommends that users of emojis should be sensitive for the different cultural variations as demarcated by geographical location, and religious group one belongs to. This study also recommends that while communicating, people on Instagram should continue to make use of emojis to emojis to enrich conversations, communicate using fewer words, adding spice to the communication. The study proposes that more studies be conducted to help understand emoji use like between Christians and Muslims. Further studies also need to be conducted on the use of Instagram as a technological factor in different communicative area like the applicability of emojis in business.
