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It's no longer just round yellow faces in different emotional states: From dog lovers to athletes to vegetarians - there is an emoji to suit just about every one of our interests. Over 10 billion are sent worldwide every year. At the end of 2021, users could choose from a palette of 3,633 different symbols. And as with all symbols that are meant to be recognized in the digital world, behind each little picture there is a code.
While, in the case of all the world's languages, this code translates an already established analog symbol system into the digital world, in the case of emojis the code brings forth the symbol for the very first time.
Thus, it is those who decide on the codes that have power over the emoji alphabet: The Unicode Consortium, based in California. In theory, it’s a non-profit organization, but in practice it's mostly made up of employees from the world's biggest tech companies. This is where criticism starts: From activists fighting not to be excluded from the emoji universe, and from linguists, computer scientists, and media theorists who see a severe imbalance in the interests the consortium represents.
But the question of how to improve this process for inventing a new language in the digital world is complex. There are massive economic interests in the fight over these little pictures - and what’s more, users want communication to be fast and easy.
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