Yellow emojis not neutral symbols of identity
Text messages and social media posts that contain yellow emojis are seen as having been written by White people, a study suggests.
Rather than being perceived as neutral, Black and White readers associate yellow emojis with White ethnicity, researchers say.
Previous studies have shown that people use skin-toned emojis as a way of representing their own identity. These became widely available in 2015, but little was known about how people perceive and interpret the emojis used by others.
In this latest study, nearly 500 participants – half self-identifying as Black and half as White – were shown text messages, some of which contained yellow emojis while others included a darker or lighter skin-toned emoji.
Yellow emojis were not seen as neutral by either Black or White reader groups. Among Black participants, 56 per cent saw yellow emojis as more likely to signify White identity, while the figure for White participants was 63 per cent.
Researchers found that darker- and lighter-toned emojis were clear indicators of the sender’s ethnicity. Including a darker-toned emoji caused both Black and White reader groups to select a Black author 80 per cent of the time. Similarly, including a lighter-toned emoji resulted in 80 per cent of readers choosing a White author.
