You may have heard it said before that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about an emoji?
Since emoji was first created in the 1990s, its use has evolved and increased significantly in texting, social media, email, and more. And now even clinicians use them to communicate with each other at work.
“It’s really interesting, the idea that a single emoji has one meaning but can mean something different to different people,” says Colin Halverson, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Halverson, along with Mike Weiner, MD, MPH, Claire Donnelly, MA, and senior author Joy L. Lee, Ph.D., MS, recently published a study in JAMA network opened on the use of emojis among hospital workers using Indiana University Health’s Diagnotes messaging app. The researchers searched thousands of lines of messages to find anything containing an emoji, then analyzed the use of emojis to determine what role they played in the messages.
“We wanted to determine if they were just duplicative, meaning they were just duplicating information that already existed, or if they were actually serving a linguistic role that could be meaningful and separate from the alphanumeric text,” Halverson said. “For example, does using a thumbs up really add new information, or is it just being used in a way that doesn’t add anything new, and could that be considered distracting and annoying to clinicians? Does that somehow affect the workflow?”
Halverson, a linguistic anthropologist, has a background in linguistics and ethics. Part of his previous research work includes studying emoji and skin tone modifiers, as well as the different meanings different people associate with emoji. Halverson said that while many studies on emoji exist, they mostly focus on computer science approaches to analysis. And until now, the use of emoji among clinicians has never been studied empirically.
“We found no confusion arising from the use of emojis and we found no implications that there is a concern about professionalism with the emojis used,” Halverson said. “Obviously, like any other form of language, you can use emoji in a way that’s inappropriate, but it doesn’t seem like emoji is more prone to that than words.”
Eighty hospitalists were included in this study. Halverson said future studies could look more closely at generational differences in emoji use and emoji use across different clinical texting systems, in addition to expanding the number and types of clinicians and messages analyzed.
“This paper represents important work on how clinicians communicate with each other as technology evolves, which will become increasingly important to understand as time goes on,” Halverson said. “No one has done this in the healthcare field yet, so there are a lot more questions to ask.”
More information:
Colin ME Halverson et al, Content analysis of the use of emoji and emoticon in clinical SMS systems, JAMA network opened (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.18140
Quote: Does emoji help your doctor communicate better? What New Research Tells Us (2023, June 13) Retrieved June 13, 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-emoji-physician-communicate.html
This document is copyrighted. Other than fair dealing for private study or research, no part may be reproduced without written permission. The content is provided for informational purposes only.