The semantics of emojis and memes: understanding meaning- making among social media users

Francis, Tasneem

The semantics of emojis and memes: understanding meaning- making among social media users

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Linguistics

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

There is no doubt that the use of emojis and memes within computer-mediated communication (CMC) on social media platforms like Facebook has become an essential part of how people communicate online (see Thurlow 2018; Thurlow and Jaroski 2020; Barbieri et al 2016; Bai et al 2019 and Thurlow and Dü rscheid 2020). A lot of work has been done to study meaning related to emojis and memes and how they function within communication (see Deumert 2014; Zhu and Ren 2022; Lynch 2022 and Ljubešić and Fišer 2016). This current study advocates for a user-centric approach to understanding meaning- making. The strength of what I am proposing in my research is how to draw an analysis of meaning-making practices linked to the use of emojis and memes within CMC while allowing users to advocate for themselves from their perspectives. This current research unpacked how the average person on Facebook attached meaning to emojis and memes when they are selected and used to communicate online. The goal was to understand whether the meaning attached is shared and universal or if there was room for different modes of expression and meaning-making. The data collected for this research included quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data. Surveys were used as a starting point for conducting one-on-one interviews with a selected number of people who were open to being interviewed after completing the survey. The study concluded that different emojis and memes are used by different people, in different ways, however, the meaning attached to different emojis, and memes become universal over time when it is shared by people. The data provided evidence that universal and shared meaning occurs. However, within the same data, there was evidence to support that even though shared and universal meaning is happening, there is still room for different modes of expression online.