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Miriam E. Sweeney, PhD

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Happy World Emoji Day!

7/17/2020

 
Happy World Emoji Day! (Yes, it's a real thing!)

Time to celebrate your favorite emoji and reflect on the technologies that we use, but often take for-granted, every day. I reflect on emoji in my research,  asking the question, "What do emojis have to do with race?" Turns out, quite a bit!

As a part of World Emoji Day, my research on whiteness and emoji skin-tone modifiers was featured in an interview with NPR's Janae Pierre from WBHM, and in this news write up from the University of Alabama.

If you are interested in learning more about the research behind these interviews, you can read about the study I conducted in 2019 with my co-author Kelsea Whaley called Technically white: Emoji skin-tone modifiers as American technoculture. 

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Interview with Radical AI podcast

6/17/2020

 
I had the absolute pleasure of talking with Jess and Dylan, the hosts of the Radical AI podcast, about the ethics of chatbots, virtual assistants, and emoji design. They were really gracious and fun to talk with, and I can't say enough good things about the quality of their podcast. I highly recommend subscribing to the Radical AI podcast and soaking up all of the wisdom from their conversations with leading scholars in technology and media studies. (A great podcast to use in class and assign for students as well!)

Subscribe or listen to the episode here!
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Book Review of The Emoji Revolution for NM&S out now

2/14/2020

 
I was very pleased to review The emoji revolution: How technology is shaping the future of communication by Philip Seargeant (2019) for New Media & Society. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn a lot more about emoji and histories of language and communication. 

An excerpt from the review:
Philip Seargeant is an applied linguist who specializes in language, social media, and online interaction. In The Emoji Revolution, Seargeant presents a wide-ranging sociolinguistic account of the historical, social, and political use contexts of emoji, arguing that emoji act “as a prism through which to view the history of human communication” (p. 5). Moreover, Seargeant identifies emoji as “a perfect cipher” (p. 190) for understanding the paradoxes of creativity and control that result from the rampant technological changes that underpin computer-mediated communication. He argues that the same innovations that make emoji a compelling global communication form—standardization, interpretive flexibility, interoperability—raise important questions about the role of consumerism and corporate power in shaping emergent computer-mediated communication practices. In this way, Seargeant identifies emoji not only as a cipher, but also as a harbinger for the future of human (and computer) communication.
Picture of book cover of The Emoji Revolution
Read the rest of the review here!

​Sweeney, M. E. (2020). The emoji revolution: How technology is shaping the future of communication. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820907080

New article out on emoji skin-tone modifers

7/3/2019

 
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I'm so excited to announce that I have a new article out with co-author (and UA SLIS alum) Kelsea Whaley, that discusses emoji skin-tone modifers and whiteness.  This project was a long time in the making, so it's a delight to finally see it out in final form! Check out the article, "Technically white: Emoji skin-tone modifers as American technoculture," in the July 2019 issue of First Monday!


Abstract:
The inclusion of skin-tone modifiers into the standard emoji set marked a shift from the default white racialization of emoji towards explicit attempts to expand racial representation in the human emoji characters. This study explores the racial logics of emoji as culturally-situated artifacts that rely on linked understandings of race and technology. We conduct an interface analysis of emoji skin-tone modifiers, coupled with user discourse analysis, to explore the design and user interpretations of skin-tone modifiers. Our findings suggest that though the skin-tone modifiers were introduced as an intervention into the lack of racial representation in emoji, they continue to technically center whiteness in the emoji set as an extension of American technoculture.
Cite as: Sweeney, M.E. & Whaley, K. (2019). Technically white: Emoji skin-tone modifiers as American technoculture. First Monday, 24(7), 0-0, http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i7.10060.

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