Expert's tears of joy over the rise of virtual emotions

THE “tears of joy” emoji remains the most popular in the world but the red heart is a close second, an Irish expert has revealed.

- BY DANNY DE VAAL

Keith Broni, who is the editor in chief of Emojipedia.org, which is the world’s number one emoji resource, said the icons are no longer considered “frivolous” and are a “cornerstone of digital communication”.

The Dubliner also stressed the use of symbols is constantly changing and believes there's an unused one that will surge in popularity in years to come.

When asked why they are so popular Mr Broni, who spoke to us for World Emoji Day, said: “Texts are dry without any kind of semantic markers. We don't write text messages as if they're prose where there are cues... we write text messages as if they are verbal speech.

“And when we speak face to face or even over the phone there are what we call paralinguistic cues.

ELEMENTS

“So my vocal inflection, my hand gestures, my facial expressions, my body posture, all of these are very, very important elements in communication and text messaging and social media posts can completely lack these, and emojis allow for us to add semantic cues into this space.”