The role of emojis in generating and responding to critiques of creative work
Open Access
- Author:
- Aritajati, Chulakorn
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 08, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Mary Beth Rosson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Mary Beth Rosson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Xiaolong Zhang, Committee Member
Benjamin Vincent Hanrahan, Committee Member
S. Shyam Sundar, Outside Member
Mary Beth Rosson, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- feedback
Emoji
Feedback
Computer Mediated Communication
Human-Computer Interaction
HCI
CMC
CSCW - Abstract:
- The feedback process is important for designers and learners to study new knowledge and improve their work. With the advancement of technology, more and more people use computer-mediated communication (CMC) to exchange feedback. However, when feedback includes negative comments, recipients may feel anger, decreased self-efficacy for the creative task, and less motivation for achieving their goals. My dissertation explores whether and how the inclusion of emojis (small graphical “characters” that often convey emotions) as a nonverbal cue may affect the reactions to and impacts of negative critiques. More specifically, I have studied whether and how emojis affect the experience of both feedback writers and feedback recipients. While earlier research has studied how other manipulations of text-based feedback may reduce the negative impacts of criticism, there has been no work yet on interventions that use visual elements. My dissertation includes three empirical studies, all conducted with participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. First, I studied when and how participants chose to include one or more emojis in their feedback. I found a number of nonverbal positive contributions of emojis, but also noted that a majority of participants did not choose to include them when writing feedback. Second, I evaluated the perceptions and revision behaviors of feedback recipients who did or did not receive emoji-bearing feedback. I found that emojis improved receivers' reactions to the feedback, their perceptions of feedback quality, their judgments of the feedback writer's credentials and their intention to apply the feedback to future work. These studies showed the value and the dynamics of using and responding to emojis as part of a feedback process. They were a direct motivation for my third study, which evaluated two techniques that I designed hoping to increase the use of emojis in feedback writing: an instructional prime and a custom emoji bar. My experiment demonstrated the success of both techniques for increasing the use of emojis. Synthesizing across studies, I discuss the prospects for making the use of emojis a natural and common element of writing text-based online feedback.