A cross-cultural analysis of emoticon utilization in social media branding communication

Despite their omnipresence, certain questions arise about emoticons’ usage in different contexts and languages. There is already a growing literature on cultural differences of preference of emoticons in text communication, however, they are mostly based on artificial experimental designs, thus, their generalizability is limited. Moreover, there still exists a gap in research to concentrate on how people use emoticons, rather than interpret them. especially in branding communication context. This study aims to quantitatively identify cross-cultural differences in English speaking and Turkish speaking Twitter users’ use of emoticons as nonverbal cues regarding Brand Communication context, by getting use of big data analysis seeking answers to the following research questions: (1) (RQ-1) How different is the attitude towards using an emoticon in messages across cultures/languages? (2) (RQ-2) How different are the set of popular emoticons preferred across cultures/languages? • (RQ-2a) Does one culture use a more diverse set of emoticons? • (RQ-2b) How much different are the set of popular emoticons across cultures/languages? (3) (RQ-3) How different emoticons are preferred semantically by certain emotions? We contribute to marketing communication and social media marketing, and aim to reveal alternative analysis methodologies regarding the potential of big data. Our findings are also valuable for understanding the major differences of preference of consumers between local and global markets