"How can I chat happily without facial expression bag!" This is an exclamation from netizens Indeed, dialogues with expression packs are low-cost and efficient. One expression pack is worth a thousand words. Expression pack can dissolve the identity gap caused by culture, economy, age and other factors, and it is easy to form cultural identity among interest groups. From copying daily joys and sorrows to capturing, marking and generating times and social expressions, expression packs have changed from emotional symbols to network social tools. As a cultural phenomenon, after several iterations, they have developed into a media force, affecting social psychology and interpersonal communication. The invention of emoticons and the upgrading of emoticons are inseparable from the development of media technology. What kind of digital communication landscape will be constructed by the development of media in the future? When we look at it like this, "how can we chat happily without facial expression bag" has become a question to be answered, a question that seems not to be a problem.
During some important festivals and activities, various expression packs often appear. The picture shows the expression pack "Golden Tiger sends blessing". Written by cuixiaoqi from Xinhua News Agency
Source: Guangming Daily
Author: zhaolijin
Emoticons enable people to express their emotions and feelings as face-to-face communication even if they are thousands of miles away
According to the 49th statistical report on China's Internet development, by December 2021, China's instant messaging users had reached 1.007 billion, accounting for 97.5% of the total number of Internet users. In addition, a large number of short videos, knowledge sharing and game applications have powerful social functions, and social media has a strong rise and quickly been widely accepted. Today, non kinship factors such as work and interest are rebuilding the free connection between people, and the intelligent association of algorithm matching is also gradually increasing. Social media and media socialization are reconstructing the current social relations and communication methods. People's emotional connections are more diverse, and richer social needs need to be met.
Before the emergence of media, human beings perceived the world through their body senses and communicated with the information transmitted by their bodies. The research shows that 70% of the communication information in face-to-face conversation is conveyed through body language such as facial expressions, gestures and movements, 23% is conveyed through intonation, and only 7% relies on text transmission. In interpersonal communication, expression is indispensable. According to Italian philosopher Agamben, inorganic substances can only reveal themselves through "solidified bodies", and animal faces are "rigid" and their expressions are "absent", which can only show their attitude towards the world through their bodies. The face is different. All internal emotions and external actions of people will be involved in the face. People's spirit, emotion and soul overflow into expressions. On the surface, people reveal themselves through their faces. In fact, their faces express people with expressions, which are an important intermediary for emotional communication.
The invention of writing and more media has overcome the limitations of time and space, and also liberated the human body. When communication no longer depends on the body, it has to transfer people's expressions, actions, sounds, thoughts, etc. to the media. In 1982, when humans used computer language to output the first smiling emoticon ": -), it was precisely to solve the problem of emotional expression in Internet space.
The small yellow face (Emoji) symbol transfers and copies human expressions and emotions in its list, which is constantly updated and widely used all over the world. In online conversation, people show their emotions related to "laughter" with the symbols of grinning, laughing and crying, and express their dissatisfaction with the symbols of frowning, tears, sweating and surprise. However, such alternative expressions as decline, cracking, flourishing firewood and eating melons are not only freely used in online communication, but also high-frequency expressions. In 2014, Emoji expression was added as a new word in the online edition of Oxford Dictionary, and symbols such as smile, cry and love were selected in a number of annual word awards. Emoticons open up the imagination space of online communication and enrich the expression of network language.
The appearance of image expression packs, with users' extensive participation in generation and sharing, has improved the function of expression packs in online social networking. The expression pack pictures are drawn from characters, animals or cartoon images in real life or film and television works, and are supplemented by words. They contain popular passwords and cultural identities. Users can share them for free or generate them independently. Expression packs not only express emotions in interpersonal communication, but also become a means of communication for film and television works and social events. "There is no hot spot of expression packs, not real hot spots". Expression packs can represent the "social expression" of a certain period. The expression pack records hot events, expresses cultural phenomena, presents collective psychology, and gradually forms a highly concerned expression pack culture.
Easy to manage, both intuitive and implicit, so that people can't stop looking
Normally, the new communication tools can greatly compress the living space of expression packets. For example, video calls realize remote face-to-face communication. The image quality and sound of smart phones record and communicate expressions and emotions more directly and truly than expression packs. However, people still rely on facial expression packs. As netizens say, "you may not have money in your mobile phone, but you can't have facial expression packs.". Technology update is always on the way, but the expression pack has never been submerged by the wave of technology.
In face-to-face communication, emotional fluctuations and changes will be reflected on the face, but expression management is not easy. Although humans can control other body organs through the central nervous system, it is not always effective for the face to refuse instrumentality and give orders to the face. On the contrary, the expression pack itself is a tool for online communication. It is intuitive and implicit. You can choose mild or sharp, bold or cold, frank or fake. It is obviously easier to manage the expression pack than to manage the expression. It is easy to use the expression pack for communication. In addition, face-to-face communication has higher requirements on people's response and control ability, while online communication has more space for thinking and preparation. Netizens said, "adults don't write their facial expressions on their faces. They all have their own facial expression packs.".
The pleasure of facial expression package chat lies not only in the freedom of control, but also in the freedom of emotional expression. If you see cute baby, cute pet with tearful eyes and cartoon character expression packs crying, you may miss the point if you think this is crying about grievances and expressing sadness. Look at the footnotes in the text - "people's little pearls are about to fall off" and "I'll be fine after crying for a month". The expression of grievance and sadness has been processed into a small emotion of "attracting people's affection". There is no fixed correspondence between the image expression and the text footnotes. Netizens can freely mark the meaning and create emotions for the expression package. The function of the expression pack has been upgraded from a simple dialogue tool to a social media. People can enjoy entertainment and interactive interest in free sharing. There are so many acceptable materials for expression packs. Why do cartoon faces, animal faces and children's faces appear most frequently? Because I don't dare to express my feelings when I can't say anything at ordinary times. I can express my feelings with the expression bag of "childlike innocence". Even if I say it wrong, it is also a disaster caused by the expression bag.
Cute expression packs often "cute" negative emotions and attitudes and turn them into pleasant emotional experiences. Unlike this clear stream, when facing the pressure of life and being passive and helpless, the "miserable" expression pack shows an attitude of accepting reality and self mocking. With "ge you lying" and "Buddhist Youth" as the source, from panda head to sad frog, from "salted fish" to "lousy", such expression packs even deliberately choose low pixel pictures to flaunt their indifferent posture. If the interviewer makes fun of himself or herself when describing his or her plight and helplessness, and the other party happens to understand this "stem", this self-evident tacit understanding really makes the expression "head" for use.
The initial function of the expression pack was to compensate for the lack of emotional expression in online social networking. Now netizens weave collective emotions and psychology into the expression pack. The expression pack can not only be used as a "safety mask" to cover the real self, but also a place to express your heart. People make fun of themselves with "single dog" and "tired dog" expressions, exaggerate their weaknesses and "sprout" or "miserable", so that everyone who encounters frustration and ordinary weak people in reality can have empathy, which is the feature of social expression. However, the expression pack that spits out quickly can not fundamentally solve the problem. "Selling cute" or "being miserable" can become a small social skill, but can not be used as the general direction of values. It would not be wise to indulge in social networking and escape from the real world and social relations in the name of "social terrorism", nor would it be the original intention of the production and dissemination of such expression packs.
The popularity of popular expression packs is mostly related to the spread of empathy. When people see the crying expression on the screen, similar emotional experiences will be activated in the brain. Even if the user is not necessarily sad at that time, seeing the "crying" symbol will also adjust their facial expression. This is empathy. Empathy is the foundation of relationships. Emoticons or expression packs are creating a new pattern of brain activity for people. When people talk, they will subconsciously imitate each other's expressions and emotions. This emotional contagion is difficult to be found in real communication. Before the emergence of emoticons and emoticons, online communication could hardly achieve empathy. The popularity of popular expression packs can be said to be the result of the spread of empathy. They first spread in a certain circle or community, and then form a broader and more lasting emotional radiation and cultural identity.
The development of media constantly breaks through people's physical limitations. At the same time, people will miss face-to-face communication
Body is the material carrier of emotion and thought. Since the development of media, from printing, telegram, telephone, to Internet digital media, artificial intelligence, etc., while transcending physical limitations and obtaining new development in communication, they will also be eager for the return of the body. Body communication has a certain ritual significance that can not be replaced by media, which makes people miss it. Physical presence represents goodwill, which proves that I am willing to be with you at this moment and share my time with you. This is emotional payment and expression, which can be expressed and perceived through face-to-face communication. Therefore, at all stages of communication development, media technology should not only transcend biological body and physical space and time, but also achieve more extensive and free communication, and will continue to pursue the real experience of face-to-face communication.
In the idea of future social scenes, the compensation for the absence of the body is no longer a partial simulation and extension of the body senses, but a media body embedded in technology and a technical body reconstructed by data and algorithms. "Media is the extension of people" will develop into "people are the extension of media". The digital body embedded in technology is expected to become the entrance connecting virtual reality. It is not only the material subject of cognition, experience, emotion and mind, but also the virtual identity of game and social interaction in the virtual world. Under the current technology trend, the bolder assumption is that the digital body will surpass the limitations of human body and create an ideal that meets our own needs( http://stock.finance.sina.com.cn/usstock/quotes/LI.html ) Relationship and digital communication, and constantly shape the scene through body data. It can even ignore the creation and reconstruction of the real foundation. Dreams that are difficult to realize in reality can be realized with the help of the consciousness and mind of the digital body. In the mixed reality, the digital body experiences the real, real and imaginary variable dimension life, surpasses the limited self, and explores the infinite spiritual world.
Looking back, although the expression pack is also the product of the development of media technology, its technical content is not high. Technology is an important factor that drives or hinders the social interaction of expression packs. On the one hand, symbols are difficult to represent the richness of human emotions and changes. When encoding meaning, it is difficult for a single expression pack to form a coherent and complete emotion. Even if many expression packs are made according to themes and series, it is difficult to fully cover people's complex and delicate feelings. In the process of receiving and decoding, if the expression pack does not fit well with the communication situation and mood, the effect of emotional communication will not be achieved. On the other hand, people's social dependence on expression packs just reflects the limitations of the current development of media technology and social applications. Take wechat as an example. Wechat was originally a "strong relationship" type of social networking for acquaintances. With the continuous growth of the address list, it has been generalized into a "weak relationship" type of connected social networking. In order to cope with full-time online communication and maintain online connection, people often have to send facial expression packets continuously or only facial expression packets. In order to cope with the "social media burnout" caused by extensive connection by "brutally" sending expression packets, the information exchange and emotional expression functions of expression packets are weakened. Sometimes, people send expression packets just to maintain dialogue.
Looking back at the history of 1G to 4G technology evolution, from voice, text, image to video, communication methods have been constantly enriched, but the interaction effect has not made an essential breakthrough and is still limited to two-dimensional experience. The expression pack preserves the expression, extends the emotional expression, and does not break through the simulation mode of body sensory segmentation. However, the extension of sensory ability to strip the integrity of the body may lead to the weakening of human as the main body of communication. Under the existing technical conditions, the application of expression pack is still flexible, meeting the daily needs of online social networking. However, in the stage of virtual social interaction, expression packs are limited by communication technology, and it is difficult to provide users with immersive interactive virtual reality social experience. However, in terms of culture and technology, we explore the expression and experience of true feelings. Expression pack social interaction is consistent with future digital communication. In a sense, calling the body to return to the communication scene is also cherishing the true human self.