Story ______ Business Trend and Future Directions for Emotional Content Technology
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Emotional Content for Digital Expression of Feelings
There is one thing most mobile messenger and social network service users have likely used on any given day: emoticons, a means to express their feelings in an online or mobile environment. Since smartphones became popular, emotional content in the digital formats of emoticons, stickers, icons, and characters has become a widespread means of communication and has grown into an established industry. This content usually consists of simple images to assist communication, but now is available in thousands of types including moving images with sound effects. This article explores visual emotional content and a possible future direction for this as an alternative means of communication.
Speak No Words—Speak with Emoticons
In this smart era that connects everything anywhere and anytime, information and communications allow users to exchange various types of information comprising words and text, symbols and pictures, and photographs and video images. Visual emotional content is a means of communicating and expressing feelings using something other than language and letters. Initially, emotional content emerged for text messages. It was widely loved as a tool to express a range of feelings undeliverable by text in a more simple and intuitive manner. Currently, simplistic icon-type stickers and emoticons made with comic characters are being actively produced, emerging as a killer service for messenger app business.
As the spread of smart devices and wide popularization of various social media services have increased the use of emoticons and other emotional content, a number of businesses are proactively using emotional content for their marketing campaigns. In addition, emotional content is increasingly being loaded in a variety of alternative communication devices to assist the disabled.
With the explosive increase in the use of emotional content in the information and communications industry, specialist organizations are eager to announce the message to apply the content for business strategies. Although emoticons emerged as a tool popular among the younger generations, they have now spread to all generations. As a core element of social networks and messenger services, they are also expected to further enhance interactions among various smart devices. Studies are actively being conducted on emoticons, the most representative type of emotional content.
For people with linguistic disabilities, emotional content also plays a significant role as an alternative means of communication, and research shows that emoticons demonstrate a considerable effect in treating aphasic patients. Emotional content has now gone further than the type of emoticons comprising various shapes, and it will also serve as an important medium to transform the cold, machine-driven digital world into a warm, humanized platform.
Most Used Emoticons in the World?
Visual emotional content has become a prerequisite for all social network services as well as email and online/mobile chatting services. Although it remains an abstract concept and has not been defined as part of legal terminology, it can be broadly categorized into icons, emoticons, stickers, and characters. The term “emoji” was derived from a Japanese word that refers to a type of emotional content mixed with signs, symbols, and images. Icons are widely used in personal computers to indicate files, folders, application programs, or devices and in various smart devices to indicate apps. This means that it is a kind of pictogram that expresses the functions and characteristics of specific object. Emoticons are often used for online chatting or sending emails on the Internet or via smart devices. Combining the words “emotion” and “icon,” emoticons take the form of pictures to express human feelings. Because the first generation of emoticons was mostly smiley faces, emoticons are often called “smileys.” Stickers as emotional content refer to all types of digital shapes, such as pictures, photographs, and animation, to express feelings to others. Lastly, the word “character” collectively refers to fictional figures appearing in novels and films, but it also means a person’s characteristics and personality. As digital emotional content, characters encompass the characteristic shapes of people, animals, and other digital creations appearing in games, comic books, and animation. What is the most widely used types of emoticons in the world? Among the 60 kinds of emoticons used worldwide, happy faces are the most frequently used, followed by sad faces and the heart shape. Other emoticons used often include shapes closely related to daily life, such as holidays, flowers, and clocks. In this context, emotional content is used not only for expressing feelings, but also for daily communication.
Emotional Content as an Alternative Means of Communication
Emotional content works as an alternative communication tool to replace language and text to convey emotions and feelings. The market for emotional content technology has expanded gradually, particularly for personal computers and mobile devices, but the largest market demand comes from messenger services operating on smart devices.
In the global mobile messenger business, SNS-based messengers programs, such as Facebook and Skype in the United States, WeChat in China, and KakaoTalk and Line in Korea, which are serviced by Daum KaKao and Naver, respectively, are dominating the market. Use of emotional content based on emoticons and stickers takes different forms by country and region. Emotional content business is much more vigorous in Asia than in the Americas or Europe, which can be explained by cultural differences. Because Westerners tend to candidly express their feelings through language and text, they are less likely to use the assistive means of communication. On the other hand, people in the East believe that it is more virtuous not to openly disclose their feelings to others. Simultaneously, they have a strong tendency to express their restrained emotions in the free digital space.
The Korean emotional content market is dominated by KakaoTalk and Line, accounting for approximately 80% of the number of users and 90% of sales. Leading the evolution of emoticons, Daum Kakao pioneered the market with a wide range of emoticons mixed with animation and sound effects, as well as images of celebrities. Meanwhile, Naver predominantly focuses on the character market. The company leads the creation of derivative markets by releasing more than 5,000 types of products in its offline retail stores, including character toys, accessories, clothes, and daily supplies.
Another wide application of emotional content is an alternative means of communication for the disabled. Basically, efforts are being made to eliminate inconvenience in communication and information distribution to enhance disabled people’s access to ICT services. For people experiencing linguistic disabilities, emotional content including emoticons is particularly useful. AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) devices and apps have been developed and distributed for linguistically disabled people and demonstrated an effect of smooth communication and treatment. Case studies on language treatment using AAC for aphasic patients found that, although AAC significantly contributes to improving communication, it results in different levels of treatment effects depending on the severity of the disability. However, AAC is highly likely to be used as an efficient communication tool for adult patients with dysarthria who have good cognitive ability. According to the study of Seong-ui Im, et al. (2013), the use of AAC is beneficial for communication by patients suffering from neurologic diseases such as cerebral palsy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease. This is mainly because their verbal expression ability is substantially lower than their ability for cognition and language understanding, and they have low speech intelligibility. In Korea, visual emotional content is drawing increasing attention as a means to prevent Alzheimer’s disease among the elderly and to enhance communication ability of people with developmental disabilities. Currently, a wide array of content is being created to help language development and treatment.
Authors: Myeong-hwan Im (Principal Researcher, Economics of Technology Research Section); Sang Hyun Ju (Special Fellow, Sportainment Research Section)
