Every 17th July, we’re always celebrate World Emoji Day by using various emoji to express our thoughts on ongoing current issue on social media. As for 2020, due to current ongoing issues, most Tweeted emojis this year show people are still coming to Twitter for the same reasons: the top reason is to laugh, but other popular reasons are to share their sadness, love, or even befuddlement. For people, Twitter provides a way to share these feelings with the world, and to communicate with people who share these same feelings.
While the emotions that people come to Twitter to share are similar, the emojis that people are using more often show how the world around us has changed, and how people’s habits and lives are changing in response. Since the beginning of 2020, the five emojis trending upwards the most, as well as the five emojis trending downwards the most, are all related to the ways in which COVID-19 is affecting everyone, showing that people use emojis as a true expression of their daily lives.
Just as the trending emojis show what people are doing more of, and less of, during COVID-19, the emojis they use while talking about COVID-19 add more context for where people are spending their time, and how they feel about COVID-19. Interestingly, the usage of some other emojis have increased significantly when compared to the same period last year and these include:
· Shopping cart emoji +2419%
· Bacteria emoji +2175%
· Toilet paper emoji +441%
· Bar of soap emoji +155%
Communities that have celebrated with emojis on Twitter
Across Southeast Asia, communities love to use Twitter-exclusive emojis that help them to highlight their passions and easily add visual components to their Tweets. With Twitter emojis to observe everything from holidays to new music from your favorite artists, there’s an emoji that you can use in Tweets with your friends and followers.
1. Events
Emojis around major events can help you to connect with like-minded people to share more about how these events are impacting you.
In celebration of International Women’s Day and the great strides that have been made in the fight for equality, Twitter partnered with @UN_Women to launch a special emoji.
This year, there was also a #YearoftheRat emoji to use with your Chinese New Year Tweets, that you could use to add to your Tweets about celebrating with friends or with family.
Recently, Singapore had its General Election, which had its own custom emoji to support awareness and conversation among the many Singaporeans discussing the issues facing the nation and the leaders it’s supporting to help guide the country.
2. Music groups
Twitter is a place where music fans love to connect with each other, especially around their favorite groups, and emoji are one of their favorite ways to share their excitement over the newest from their favorites.
For BTS, ARMY love to commemorate new albums and milestones with emojis on Twitter. BTS celebrated Map of the Soul: 7 with purple emojis with a 7 logo. These emojis were updated and used to help fans to express their appreciation and excitement around BTS’s anniversary, #2020BTSFESTA, as well as to help ARMY highlight their favorite BTS member with emojis for each member.
BLACKPINK’s fans, BLINK, used emojis to feel closer to their idols, by using emojis that the members of BLACKPINK created themselves. Each emoji had its own story, that members of the group revealed in a record-breaking #TwitterBlueroom live Q&A.
3. Causes
It’s also important for people on Twitter to show their support for the causes and people who need it the most. Emojis are just one of the many tools available on Twitter for both people looking to support these causes and people, as well as people looking for help, and emoji help to show our support here. For example, the SG music emoji was created in support of Hear65 Sing Along SG, a month-long virtual karaoke concert series in response to the widespread cancellations of events and closure of performing venues nationwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitter has also created emoji for causes like World Press Freedom Day, to help celebrate journalism and advocate for press freedom on Twitter, as well as to rally with others who support and want to thank journalists.
No matter what your community, there’s a Twitter emoji to help you express yourself and connect with other people that share your interests. Happy World Emoji Day!