Emojis Affect Processing Fluency on Social Media

As computer-mediated communication has increased, people have resorted to new ways of communicating with each other that extend beyond text. One of these ways is the emoji-a graphical symbol used to represent faces or objects. This nonverbal symbol has the ability to hold a variety of meanings: happiness, sadness, comfort, or even sarcasm (Walther & D'Addario, 2001). The present study tests the ability of emojis to affect processing fluency in online settings. Messages on Twitter were presented with their original emoji (congruent condition), with a context-inappropriate emoji (incongruent condition), or with the emoji removed completely (neutral condition). Participants were asked how understandable or believable these messages were and how likely they would be to share the message on social media. Messages with the original emoji were rated as easier to understand and more believable than messages with no emoji or an emoji inappropriate for the message's context. Public Policy Relevance Statement This study suggests that when social media users insert a context-appropriate emoji into a message (i.e., a tweet), users find the statement to be easier to understand and more believable when compared with the same message with no emoji or with a context-inappropriate emoji. These effects were consistent even when social media use was controlled, suggesting that even casual users of social media may be influenced by the presence of an emoji in a simple message.