The World Uses One Emoji More Than All Others全球使用最多的表情符号

In hundreds of years， emoji1 could become the digital cave art2 of our times. At least that’s what Mayank Kej-riwal， a research assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California， speculates. His latest research studying emoji usage on Twitter is spurring him to think about whether our collective real-time behavior on social media can capture and reveal something about the present human condition.

数百年后，表情符号或将成为我们这个时代的数字洞穴艺术。至少南加州大学工业与系统工程系的研究助理教授马扬克·凯吉里瓦尔如此推断。他最近研究了推特上的表情符号使用情况，由此激发进一步思考，即我们在社交媒体的实时集体行为能否表达和揭示人类的某些现状。

“The single-most interesting insight that came out [of the study] was that people really are very universal when it comes to emoji usage，” he says. “No matter what language you look at， you see a very clear trend emerging.”

凯吉里瓦尔指出：“（研究）最为有趣的发现是，人们在表情符号的使用上确实很富共性。无论是哪种语言，都显现出非常清晰的趋势。”

He and his team analyzed over 1.5 billion public tweets from October 2016 to determine how Twitter users from all over the globe were employing emoji in their social communications. Then， they isolated the tweets that were GPS-enabled3 and scoured the metadata4 to find language information.

他和团队分析了2016年10月以来超过15亿条公开推文，以确定全球推特用户如何在社交中使用表情符号。随后，他们抽取了附有定位信息的推文，在元数据中搜寻语言信息。

“We picked a period well in the pre-pandemic because we wanted to study very general trends， not event-specific like after an election，” he explains. The team wanted to examine a time before TikTok， Snapchat， and other platforms emerged—a time in which the majority of social media users were concentrated on Twitter. “We tried to figure out which emoji were popular，” he says. “Is there a language difference， country difference， or are they universal？ How globalized are we in the emoji landscape？”

“我们想研究非常普遍的趋势，而非诸如大选后这种特定的趋势，因此选定的时间段早在疫情之前。”他解释道。他们团队想要考察大多数社交媒体用户都集中在推特的时期，即抖音国际版、色拉布等平台尚未崭露头角的时期。“我们想找出流行的表情符号。”他说，“这些表情符号是否会因为推主语言和国别不同而千差万别？抑或如出一辙？表情符号领域的全球化程度有多高？”

The most popular kinds of emoji

最受欢迎的表情符号

Indeed， they found that people were using emoji in a similar fashion regardless of nationality or language. The most popular type of emoji everywhere are those that depict emotions （joy， sadness， anger）， with the laugh-cry face topping the charts as the single-most popular emoji. Smiling faces and hearts are very well-loved too. “These tend to be more emotive. They either express an opinion or an emotional state. That suggests that we are emotional creatures，” says Kejriwal.

他们果然发现，无论国别或语言为何，人们使用表情符号的方式类似。世界上最受欢迎的表情符号类型是情感表达类（高兴、悲伤、生气），其中“笑哭”的表情荣登榜首，成为最流行的表情符号。“微笑脸”和“爱心”也很受欢迎。“这些表情符号都更情绪化，要么表达观点，要么表现情感状态。这说明我们是感性生物。”凯吉里瓦尔说道。

Western nations appeared to favor smiling faces more， and most countries had relatively comparable proportions of hearts to smiley faces， except for the Middle East， where “the blue heart is very popular，” he says. “The normal red heart was very popular in South American countries， including Brazil.”

西方国家似乎更喜欢微笑脸，除中东地区外的大多数国家，爱心和笑脸的使用比例大致相当。“蓝色爱心在中东很受欢迎。”他说道，“常见的红色爱心在包括巴西在内的南美洲国家非常流行。”

Even though it was not part of the study， from what Kejriwal has observed， many responses he sees to memes5 on the internet tend to contain more emoji. “The really good memes have an emotional impact， so it kind of goes to the original claim， that when there’s an emotional impact， emoji are used more， words are used less often，” he says. “Even just thinking about the words takes energy. It’s just easier to send off an emoji.”

尽管不在研究之列，但凯吉里瓦尔观察发现，许多网友回复网络爆红内容时往往会使用更多表情符号。“真正精彩的网络爆红内容都能感染人的情绪，这多少印证了此前的观点，即有情感效应时，表情符号的使用频率会更高，文字的使用频率则较低。”他说，“仅是构思文字表达也要费神，发送表情符号则轻而易举。”

Emoji for conveying a sense of place

传达地域感的表情符号

The experiential emoji populate the middle of the rankings. They’re not as popular as the symbols that show an emotion， but are still used moderately. These are the food symbols and the activity symbols （like football， rugby， or beach balls）. Sometimes， which specific experiential emoji were popular was location or event-dependent. Experiences can also include holidays that are celebrated worldwide. For example， the Halloween emoji was very popular in October in the US， but also in Canada and Australia.

体验型表情符号排在受欢迎榜单的中间位置。它们不像情感表达类符号一样风靡，但仍有不少人使用。这些表情符号有关食物和活动（例如足球、橄榄球或沙滩球）。有时，哪些特定的体验型表情符号能够风行与地点或事件息息相关。这些体验包括全世界都庆祝的节日。如每年10月，有关万圣节的表情符号不仅会在美国盛行，在加拿大和澳大利亚亦会形成潮流。

“We did find that in the vacation places， the emoji [usage] was more. If you had coastal cities， people tended to tweet more， and these [tweets] also had more emoji. For example， in Australia’s coastal cities， all the beach-related emoji were always there. And if you had great weather in coastal cities， you would see much more diversity of emoji，” Kejriwal says. “In the Scandinavian countries， we didn’t find that much diversity of emoji usage. They tended to be clustered around a small set of emoji.”

“的确，我们发现，在度假胜地，表情符号（的使用频率）更高。身处海滨城市的人往往发更多推文，这些（推文）也包含更多的表情符号。例如，在澳大利亚的沿海城市，总能发现所有与海滩有关的表情符号。如果这些沿海城市恰逢好天气，你看到的表情符号要丰富得多。”凯吉里瓦尔说，“我们没在斯堪的纳维亚半岛国家的用户推文中找到如此丰富多彩的表情符号，这些国家偏爱某一小部分符号。”