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Vol.24, No.3, 3 ~ 17, 2021
Title
Is it a Smile or Ridicule? Understanding the Positivity of Smile Emoticons between High and Low Status Teenagers in Online Games
 
Abstract
Studies have found that people with higher social status pay little attention to other people’s emotions and facial expressions. However, only a few studies have made similar observations on adolescents with high cyberspace social status. Therefore, this study sought to identify how adolescents with different online game character social statuses interpreted the smile emoticons in negative and positive situations, that is, did they perceive the emoticon to be positive (smile, encouragement, and consolation) or negative (derision, ridicule, and sarcasm). In Experiment 1, the participants were separated into three groups; those who had a lower than global average online game character status, those who had the same as the global average, and those who had higher than the global average. The participants were then asked to judge the meaning of the smile emoticon received in various positive or negative situations. In Experiment 2, the game character levels of the participants were set to be either higher or lower than the others' characters, and they were again asked to judge the meaning of the smile emoticon received in the positive or negative situations. In Experiment 3, the participants were separated into four groups; lower level than the average game character status (no information on the level of acquaintance’s game character), lower than the average but higher than the character of the other, higher than the average status (no information on the other’s character level), and higher than the average but lower than the character of the other, and asked to judge the meaning of the smile emoticon in positive or negative situations. It was found that when participants had a lower-level character compared to the average, had a lower-level character than the other, and had higher than the average but lower than the other’s character, they interpreted the smile emoticon as derision, ridicule, or sarcasm. However, participants with higher level characters, higher than that of the other, and lower than the average but higher than the other interpreted the emoticon as a smile or consolation. This study was significant because it demonstrated the impact of an adolescent’s social cyberspace status on their online communication.
Key Words
Youth, Social status, Online games, Emoticon, Game level, Communication, 청소년, 사회적 지위, 온라인 게임, 이모티콘, 게임 레벨, 의사소통
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