Racism is Not Getting Worse, it's Getting Tweeted. : A study of the impact of non-verbal cues in hashtag activism. Which emojis correlates with #blacklivesmatter and #alllivesmatter?

Abstract: Scholars are often studying emojis as pure visual elements or as essential textual parts. Theories in this study bridge these subfields and examine emojis in both fields. This bridging understanding of emojis is applied to hashtag activism in the discursive Black Lives Matter debate to increase the comprehension of the impact of emojis. Emojis can be used in various hashtag activism as reinforcing visual elements that help put a figurative meaning to political movements. Emojis can also be used to change the intonation or meanings in computer-mediated communication and thereby be essential for understanding the textual meaning as a whole. The study is conducted with quantitative content analysis of tweets relating to two, here considered oppositional, hashtags; #blacklivesmatter and #alllivesmatter with the aim of receiving a comprehension of how the support of emojis affect the written statements. The study presents results and a thorough discussion that brings the conclusion of emojis having an immense impact, as both visual and textual support on the tweets written in this political online debate.