How has the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic affected global emoji usage?

Abstract

Over the past few decades, emojis have emerged as a popular form of non-linguistic expression in computer-mediated communication. Various factors have been known to affect emoji usage patterns (such as age, gender, platform diversity etc.). The aim of the current study is to explore if the onset of the coronavirus pandemic (2019–20) has affected emoji usage patterns across various countries. The present study was conducted on two sets of tweets, collected before (July, 2019) and during the pandemic (March, 2020). The results suggest that although the usage of specific emojis has not changed noticeably (that is, the popular emojis mostly remained the same), the emoji density (average number of emojis per tweet) and the relative popularity of specific emojis have changed. This could potentially point toward a sense of insufficiency of emojis to express the sentiments associated with the pandemic.