Repurposing emoji for personalised communication::Why [pizza slice] means “I love you”

The use of emoji in digital communication can convey a wealth of emotions and concepts that otherwise would take many words to express. Emoji have become a popular form of communication, with researchers claiming emoji represent a type of “ubiquitous language” that can span different languages. In this paper however, we explore how emoji are also used in highly personalised and purposefully secretive ways. We show that emoji are repurposed for something other than their “intended” use between close partners, family members and friends. We present the range of reasons why certain emoji get chosen, including the concept of “emoji affordance” and explore why repurposing occurs. Normally used for speed, some emoji are instead used to convey intimate and personal sentiments that, for many reasons, their users cannot express in words. We discuss how this form of repurposing must be considered in tasks such as emoji-based sentiment analysis

OPICO: A platform for collecting and analyzing emoji usage

Emojis have emerged as a popular form of digital communication that can quickly convey big ideas or expressions with a single character. Since their creation in 1999, emojis have become a mainstay in the digital lexicography of instant messaging and social media. However, emojis are traditionally used in conjunction with text, as supplemental metadata. This paper explores the feasibility of emoji-only communication and emoji grammars. To gather emoji-only data, we built Opico, an emoji-first, social media mobile app that allows users to share emoji reactions about the places they visit with their friends. Each post in the app is a one-to-five emoji sentence to express an emotion, sentiment, or description about a location. After collecting over 3500 emoji reactions and having over 900 users on the app, the results demonstrate emoji-only communication provided concise forms of expression about various locations across the world. Data analysis has uncovered the various patterns and linguistics of how users construct emoji-only sentences, building the foundation for an emoji grammar

Management and visualisation: seeing beyond the strategic

As organisations of all sizes become increasingly digitalised, a core management challenge remains unresolved. The ability to successfully and sustainably connect the stated vision of an organisation with its strategic plans and, in turn, with the reported reality of day-to-day operations, is largely an elusive ambition, despite the many stated advantages provided by contemporary technologies. In this book, the case is made for visual management as a method of communications, planning, learning and reporting that connects the organisation in a single, meaningful and seamless way. Throughout this book, visual management is theorised around the position that all forms of management documentation are an artefact of human construction and of the organisation itself that reflect learned patterns of activity. The book places visual management as a more intuitive and seamless method of coordinating, learning and communicating across an organisation than more traditional formats of presenting management documents. Consciously assembling the artefacts of an organisation in order to manage it introduces a layer of criticality that encourages reflection and consistency that is often absent from current management practice. The benefits that a visual approach brings to organisational management are an increasing necessity, as machine learning, robotics and process automation remove traditional roles from organisations and necessitate new views on how individuals now fit into a data-informed business. The book contributes to the academic debate regarding resource-based and knowledge-based views of the organisation by advocating a different, more holistic viewpoint and will thus appeal to academics and researchers in this area. It would also benefit students across business disciplines, whilst the practical models and tools offered will benefit directors and managers looking to implement their own visual organisational language

Haptic history : heads, hands and hearts

This thesis was prompted by the issue of widespread student disengagement in history classrooms. I argue that a key factor in student disengagement with school history is disciplinary history’s pedagogic legacy as an ocular, text-focused intellectual pursuit. This is part of a broader disjunction between public and academic history. Ordinary people primarily make sense of the past through the materiality of things—through objects, artefacts, landscapes and their bodies—but this is not reflected in the way history is usually taught in schools. My research addresses this problem by developing a materialist model of history pedagogy— ‘haptic history’—that has been derived from a close analysis of two groups who employ materiality in their history praxis: school teachers, who self-identify as employing a materialist approach in their history teaching; and historical re-enactors/living historians. These groups are the focus of this study. They have an avowed educative goal and use the materiality of the past as both source and method, to construct historical knowledge, ‘do’ historical thinking and experience historical consciousness. I explore the materialist praxis of these groups using a qualitative methodology of surveys, in-depth interviews, auto-ethnography, focus groups and case studies. In analysis, I draw on Collingwood’s idea of history, together with interdisciplinary and theoretical insights from the fields of archaeology, social anthropology, museum, performance and material culture studies, to unpick and analyse the way materiality is used in these contexts as forms of historical consciousness and historical thinking. The analysis is then used to construct a model of haptic history pedagogy, with guideposts to support teacher classroom praxis. In the process of building a haptic history model of pedagogy, my research makes broader arguments around materiality and history. I argue that materiality is a significant part of ‘historical consciousness’ and our sense of self as historical beings. I further conclude that the (co)agency of ‘things’ weave webs of entanglement and connection between people in the present and the past that are deeply connective, engaging and serve to foster kinaesthetic empathy. This conclusion warrants an expansion of current models of historical empathy beyond the cognitive and affective, to include the kinaesthetic dimension. My research makes a significant contribution to history pedagogy by demonstrating the importance of touch and embodiment as performative and experiential modes for knowing the past. I demonstrate that when the materiality of history is experienced synergistically through ‘heads, hands and hearts’, the historical sensation of ekstasis is facilitated. This research further contributes to issues of access and equity in history education; haptic history’s materialist approach engages a wide range of learners, especially (but not exclusively) those who struggle to engage with traditional, text-heavy forms of history. Beyond history pedagogy, this study advances the case for disciplinary history to embrace the possibilities and opportunities inherent in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the past. In venturing into the field of materiality, my research also raises significant questions around the co-agency of things in history, and in doing so joins others in prompting a reconsideration of an exclusively anthropocentric view of agency in the past

Voices from the South

This volume captures the status of digital humanities within the Arts in South Africa. The primary research methodology falls within the broader tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics, with a specific emphasis on visual hermeneutics. Some of the tools utilised as part of the visual hermeneutic methods are geographic information system (GIS) mapping, sensory ethnography and narrative pathways. Digital humanities is positioned here as the necessary engagement of the humanities with the pervasive digital culture of the 21st century. It is posited that the humanities and arts, in particular, have an essential role to play in unlocking meaning from scientific, technological and data-driven research. The critical engagement with digital humanities is foregrounded throughout the volume, as this crucial engagement works through images. Images (as understood within image studies) are not merely another form of text but always more than text. As such, this book is the first of its kind in the South African scholarly landscape, and notably also a first on the African continent. Its targeted audience include both scholars within the humanities, particularly in the arts and social sciences. Researchers pursuing the new field of digital humanities may also find the ideas presented in this book significant. Several of the chapters analyse the question of dealing with digital humanities through representations of the self as viewed from the Global South. However, it should be noted that self-representation is not the only area covered in this volume. The latter chapters of the book discuss innovative ways of implementing digital humanities strategies and methodologies for teaching and researching in South Africa

The Future of Media

How do we combat post-truth in the news? Are social media influencers the journalists of today? What is it like to live in a smart city? Does AI really change "everything"? The Future of Media investigates the future of media industries and technologies (journalism, TV, film, photography, radio, publishing, social media), while exploring how media shape our future—on a political, economic, cultural and individual level. Issues of diversity, media reform, labour, activism and art take the discussion into a wider social context. Through this, the book celebrates the importance and vitality of media in the modern world. The Future of Media is also an experiment in collaborative modes of thinking and working. Co-authored by theorists and practitioners from one of the world's most established media departments, it offers a radical, creative and critical take on media industries—and on world affairs

Multidisciplinary Aspects of Design. Objects, Processes, Experiences and Narratives

The book addresses the contemporary perspectives of design on a multidisciplinary through 4 key words: objects, processes, experiences, narratives. It aims at further investigating the role of the archive for the design culture reflecting on “Memory and Future” and “The Tools of Design and the Language of Representation”, and also themes that are yet at the center of the multidisciplinary debate on design. The tenets of the conference (OPEN: objects, processes, experiences and narratives) will hence also correspond to the book sections: -Objects. Design as focused on the object, on its functional and symbolic dimension, and at the same time on the object as a tool for representing cultures; -Processes. The designer’s self-reflective moment which is focused on the analysis and on the definition of processes in various contexts, spanning innovation, social engagement, reflection on emergencies or forecasting. -Experiences. Design as a theoretical and practical strategy aimed at facilitating experiential interactions among people, people and objects or environments. -Narratives. Making history, representing through different media, archiving, narrating, and exhibiting design