Cross-Cultural Comparison of Nonverbal Cues in Emoticons on Twitter: Evidence from Big Data Analysis

Abstract

Relying on Gudykunst's cultural variability in communication (CVC) framework and culture-specific facial expressions of emotion, we examined how people's use of emoticons varies cross-culturally. By merging emoticon usage patterns on Twitter with Hofstede's national culture scores and national indicators across 78 countries, this study found that people within individualistic cultures favor horizontal and mouth-oriented emoticons like :), while those within collectivistic cultures favor vertical and eye-oriented emoticons like ^_^. Our study serves to demonstrate how recent big data-driven approaches can be used to test research hypotheses in cross-cultural communication effectively from the methodological triangulation perspective. Implications and limitations regarding the findings of this study are also discussed.