PRISMOJI

01/27/2020

Today, in surreal discoveries, we learned that our emoji research was just cited in an official report published by Russia's Ministry of Science and Higher Education 😂😂😂

Specifically, a law professor at Kabardino-Balkar State University wrote a paper titled "DIGITALIZATION IN JUDICIAL ENFORCEMENT." Google Translate suggests the paper's core argument is for the use of more AI in Russia's criminal justice system, given that all other facets of modern life are becoming rapidly digitized, lest the law be left behind. One of the examples she gives of rapid digitization in everyday life is the profusion of emojis!!!

"The founder of PRISMOJI, Hamdan Azhar, whose main activity is the development of the “science of smiles for people,” reveals cultural differences in the interpretation of graphic images. Social media emoticons are the ultimate form of unstructured data. Form of analysis of mood, people's reaction to events. In turn, legal regulation and graphic content language in the context of modern digitalization (digitalization) has not received while in Russia its due study. On this problem in Russian legal studies drew attention earlier only indirectly."

Google Translate is not nearly good enough for us to properly understand this paper which impresses upon me the extent to which our view of the world - even in the age of the Internet! - is necessarily local and limited.

12/14/2018

Great article in BBC News citing our research!

"One good indicator of the lack of universality amongst emoji use was highlighted by a study of how Muslims expressed their thoughts regarding Ramadan in 2017. Hamdan Azhar of prismoji.com showed that tweets with the in English, German, Spanish and Turkish were most likely to contain the red heart emoji. However, in Arabic, Urdu and Farsi the most commonly used emoji was the crescent moon.

Equally, in English, French, German, Spanish, Turkish, Farsi and Indonesian, the clasped hands emoji ranked consistently in the top three of all emojis used, while in Arabic it ranked ninth and was not amongst Urdu’s most commonly used emojis at all.

This is perhaps an indicator of the fact that joining the palms it is not traditionally associated with Islamic prayer, although in the West the symbol carries plenty of religious significance. In Japan, where emojis originate, the symbol is generally used as to mean ‘please’ or ‘thank you’, without necessarily evoking religious connotations."

In some parts of the world, an angel can signify death and clapping hands imply sexual in*******se.

02/26/2018

A humbling profile of our work by the University of Michigan School of Public Health!

"When I talk to high school and college students about how data science can tell them which emojis Kanye West is using, and how that's different from the emojis Taylor Swift is using, their eyes just light up."

Hamdan Azhar's training in biostatistics has helped him move from Presidential campaigns to social media giants. Now he is forging ahead in data journalism, and his emoji analysis is helping us understand the bigger picture.

01/30/2018

Emoji data science "allows us to get out of our own bubbles and allows us to get access to a broader swath of human experience." A great article in Nieman Journalism Lab about our work - check it out! 😌📊🔬

"The hard part is not the technical stuff. The hard part is how to tell a story about this or ask the right questions. This is the most personal form of data science."

10/20/2017

Whenever we have a topic that people feel strongly about, we’re also likely to find an array of emojis that are used to accentuate and complement those feelings.

Over the past few days, has emerged as a viral social media trend used by women to express solidarity in the face of a culture of sexual harassment and assault.

The top three emojis used with are the ❤️ red heart, the 💔 broken heart, and the 😔 pensive face – conveying an emoji emotional signature of love, heartbreak, and disappointment. The 💜 purple heart and 💕 two hearts emojis also make an appearance in the top ten, along with the ✊ raised fist 💪 flexed biceps as shows of solidarity.

We also find a gradation of emojis based on mean skin tone, with ✊ being the darkest, with a mean skin tone of 2.8, and 🖕 being the lightest, with a mean skin tone of 1.6.

Over the past few days, has emerged as a viral social media trend used by women to express solidarity in the face of a culture of sexual harassment and assault. The top three emojis used wit…

09/01/2017

Some updates from PRISMOJI world: Last week, The Stream on Al Jazeera broadcast an entire segment on emoji diversity and their role in popular culture. PRISMOJI founder Hamdan Azhar was one of the panelists, along with Emojipedia's Jeremy Burge, linguist Gretchen McCulloch, and Kate Miltner of USC. Take a listen here! We published an analysis of the top emojis of World Emoji Day… [ 62 more words ]

Check out our interview on Al Jazeera, our analysis of the top cat face emojis of World Emoji Day, and more!

09/01/2017

On August 15th, we held the second Data Storytelling NYC while graciously hosted by Grafiti App and Matter.VC. We heard lighting talks from an incredible slate of innovators spanning the worlds of technology and media, including Andres Jauregui, Senior Online Editor at Forbes; Kate Rabinowitz, Data Fellow at ProPublica; Amanda Shendruk, Data Visualization Designer at Council on Foreign Relations; Jeremy Singer-Vine, Data Editor at BuzzFeed News; Matthew Ström, Design Director at The Wall Street Journal; Julia Wolfe, Visual Journalist at FiveThirtyEight; and Matt Daniels, Founder of Polygraph.

(Photography: Arya Ghavamian)

Follow along for future events at https://www.meetup.com/Data-Storytelling-NYC!

** The Data Storytelling NYC Community Meetup is organized jointly by PRISMOJI, Grafiti App, and Polygraph with the goal of building an interdisciplinary and collaborative community at the intersection of media and technology in NYC **

08/01/2017

Over the past year, we've applied emoji data science to studying topics ranging from Brexit to the death of Fidel Castro to the true meaning of the peach emoji. (Hint: 🍑 almost never refers to the fruit.) Naturally, for World Emoji Day! we wanted to go meta and look at the top emojis used throughout the day. Here's what we found.

Over the past year, we've applied emoji data science to studying topics ranging from Brexit to the death of Fidel Castro to the true meaning of the peach emoji. (Hint: 🍑 almost never refers to the fruit.) Naturally, for World Emoji Day, we wanted to go meta and look at the

07/28/2017

👏💪💀❄️😏 The long awaited Game of Thrones has finally returned! If you’re a fan of the HBO show but don’t watch a new episode immediately, you likely stay clear of the Twitter world, for *the net is dark and full of spoilers*. So how did GoT fans react to the first two episodes on Twitter? Ride with PRISMOJI and Anahita Bahri on a journey through The Emojis of Game of Thrones!

The long awaited Game of Thrones has finally returned! If you’re a fan of the HBO show but don’t watch a new episode immediately, you likely stay clear of the Twitter world, for the net is dark and…

07/27/2017

On Monday July 17th, we held the first ever NYC Data Storytelling Community Meetup, which fortuitously coincided with . We heard from innovators spanning the worlds of journalism & technology, including Matthew Daniels, founder of Polygraph; Farhan Mustafa, founder of Grafiti App and former data journalist at Al Jazeera English; Hamdan Azhar, founder of PRISMOJI and former data scientist at Facebook; and Anahita Bahri, data science intern at Spotify.

Thanks to Matter.VC and Grafiti App for graciously hosting us, and to Saad Halim Khan for the incredible photography! Stay tuned for our next event, and drop us a note if you'd like to help organize!