Emoji rhetoric: a social media influencer perspective

ABSTRACT

Social media require a marketing rhetoric that embraces emerging language use and shifting communication norms. Emojis have become quintessential elements of social media communication; yet, their role in supporting persuasion attempts has not been systematically analysed. Drawing on general rhetoric literature, this paper dissects, portrays and labels social media influencers’ persuasive attempts to initiate engagement through emojis. The focus on influencers is justified because of their dual roles as marketers and active social media users. 600 Weibo posts by the top 200 Weibo influencers were collected to develop a taxonomy of emoji-based verbal moves aimed at encouraging responses in followers. The resulting taxonomy demonstrates that emoji use by social media influencers is complex and strategic and serves multiple persuasive and communicative purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketing rhetoric
• social media marketing
• influencer
• emoji
• taxonomy
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jing Ge

Jing Ge is a postdoctoral research fellow at Anthropology Department, University of California, Berkeley. She has a PhD in Marketing Communication from the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland, Australia and has close to 10 years of online marketing industry experience. Her research focuses on computer-mediated communication and the language use of businesses and consumers on social media.

Ulrike Gretzel

Ulrike Gretzel is a senior fellow at the Center for Public Relations, University of Southern California. She has a PhD in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has held previous appointments in tourism and marketing at Texas A&M University, the University of Wollongong, Australia, and the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research focuses on persuasion in human-computer mediated contexts.