- 03/10/2016
- Category: Commentaries
We have entered an era where freedom of expression is guaranteed and we simply cannot escape from showing expression via social media. These days, topical development to include certain new emoji for instance, has created such groundbreaking momentum. Apple proposed gender and skin colors options for the emoji to be included into the emoji list back in 2014 and recently in 2016 to be synchronized with their OS 10.[1] And today, another breakthrough for emoji is initiated by personal opinion of Rayouf Alhumeidi, 15 years old adolescent to propose the idea of asserting emoji of women and men with headscarfs.[2] The proposal statement went viral and reconstructed the general values in society over emoji. Afterwards, we may notice that emoji does not only portray benefits over showing expression beyond words, instead it has reconstructed the general credence by acknowledging and respecting the perception over gender, sexual preference or certain cultural background that sometimes create stereotypes in our society.
The escalated trend is not merely related to whether or not emoji should be developed to capture expression, instead it penetrates the options of opting different credence or different value. Or, in other words, providing the possibility to add more and more awareness towards social issues through digital graphics that can express beyond letters and punctuations. Indeed, when the case is related to sensitive topic like culture or religion or personal background (sexual preference and inter-gender relationship), the debate is heatened up and so is the case of issuing novel emoji in the list. Eventhough the debate has escalated, in fact, not so many people know the origin of omnipresent emojis. Before emoji was introduced, the usage of emoticon was hyped back in the day and only later was followed by the increase of daily usage of emoji. The quandary is being depicted by seeing misperception between emoticon and emoji. As people in general and even media have both been incorrectly using the term of emoticon for emoji or the other way around. This makes the term vague and needs to be clarified before substantially debating over the controversial emoji that has been issued or proposed.
Emoticon is likely to be identically compared to emoji and this is not the case. As being pointed out by Alex Hern, technology reporter in The Guardian, emoticon is defined as emotion icon that was being used to express emotion on text based medium.[3] We must bear in mind that both emoticon and emoji are actually under one umbrella of intention; to express emotion beyond letters that the sender want the receiver to understand. The unique background is not discontinued; instead one research proves that emoticons were being used as early as typographical arts back in 1881.[4] The distinguishing features comprise on how both are being generated and what medium they use to deliver the final form. As being stated before, emoticon was being invented on the very first hand. According to the inventor of emoticon in 1982, Fahlman, the function of it was initially to express emotions using standard keyboard characters.[5] Other than that, in pedagogic-related sector, Fahlman mentioned the purpose of emoticon as the emotional statement to indicate the humor or sarcasm that might lead to faulty in the limited text-based communication.[6]
Since the initial function of emoticon has flourished in a more captivating way, by recalling aesthetical function and mimicing accuracy of expressions; thus both are leading to the existence of emoji as the transformation of showing emotion via message. Being distinct to emoticon, emoji is originated from picture that is generated by Unicode; the extension of regular characters on almost every Operation System that we have today. [7] Similar to special characters for special fonts, emoji was derived from graphics just like Chinese characters or Kanji characters. Its first creation was even coherent to the its first portray in 1986 – 1987 in asserting Chinese characters for keyboard purpose by both Xerox and Apple.[8] Unicode Consortium was the final project with three main gambits of investigating emoji; comparisons of fixed-width and mixed-width text access, investigations of the total system storage requirements with two-byte text; and preliminary character counts for all world alphabets.[9] With long process of congealing the Unicode as non – profit corporation and legitimate institution devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data, the Unicode initiators had to tacitly build from scratch.[10]
As today, the debate has enlarged and been taken into account further than just over the origin of it. This circumstance makes the standard is more complex than just general rules of creating viable development of newly established emojis. The fact that Unicode have agreed upon several transformations, for instance gender preference or skin colors or even some additional features, such as countries flags or foods. However, the banal is challenged by imparted personal comment of a young girl who wears veil, Alhumeidi. The opinion is tangible to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, and being proposed to Unicode.[11] Headscarf emoji debate escalates due to the current delicate refugees issue in Europe (since Ms. Alhumeidi’s domicile is in Germany). The social construction over the hijab is afterwards being debated due to stereotypes over certain belief, of which is in this issue related with Islam.
However, the 15 years old teenager remind netizens that the population that wear headcovers in Europe are quite massive in proportion. Being germane to her personal opinion, the veil is not only being worn by Muslim background, but also other part of world population with other credences, such as the Sikh turban, Jewish headcovering (kippah), Eastern Orthodox veil, and many others.[12] The prejudice sentiments however still exist throughout Europe to perceive people with headscarf or veil as threat in society.[13] Taking account the fact of religious attire limitation policy, there are 18 of the region’s 45 countries (40% of the world) who have implemented such policy in the world. [14] Alas, 3 out of 4.5 or 7% of women with religious attire in Europe have experienced negative harassment.[15] The phenomenon is once again being highlighted and socially reconstructed through the insinuated idea of simply asserting headscarf emoji and can be considered as digital revolution.
The follow-up is still not yet be revealed immediately on behalf of Unicode statement. At the moment, the final version of the proposal is being drafted by Drafting Committee and will be presented by November 2016.[16] However, recalling the fact that Unicode Consortium has mission to be inclusive and also promoting universal values, thus the proposed idea might be seriously contemplated. Furthermore, the unique trait of Unicode as non-profit corporation is its well-engagement with many influential voting members; e.g. Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Google, Facebook, etc. Meanwhile, the main feature of non-profit corporation is to serve public benefits (in this case is to enlist and publish the emojis for the sake of public, companies and members’ use) and at the same time, they can acquire special treatments under legal scheme, such as having the priviledge to get tax exempt.[17] If the proposal is instead being rejected, then the promotion to raise social awareness, share universal understanding and serve public benefits under the framework of Unicode must be evaluated once more.
[1] Jeremy Burge, ‘2015: The Year of Emoji Diversity’, Blog Emojipedia (online),
<http://blog.emojipedia.org/2015-the-year-of-emoji-diversity/>, accessed 25 September 2016, 04 November 2014
and also Unicode.org, ‘Proposed Update Unicode® Technical Report #51’, Unicode (online) , accessed 25 September 2016, 9 August 2016
[2] BBC, ‘Headscarf emoji proposed by 15-year-old Saudi girl’, BBC.com (online),
<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37358719>, accessed 23 September 2016, 14 September 2016
[3] Alex Hern, ‘Don’t know the difference between emoji and emoticons? Let me explain’, The Guardian(online), , accessed 23 September 2016, 6 February 2015
[4] Huffington Post UK, ‘Emoticons First Appeared In 1881 Edition Of Puck Magazine’, Huffington Post (online), , accessed 26 September 2016, 17 July 2016
[5]Huffington Post, ‘Scott Fahlman, Inventor Of The Emoticon, Calls Emoji ‘Ugly’ :’-(‘, Huffington Post (online),
, accessed 22 September 2016, 9 Desember 2016
[6] Huffington Post, ‘Scott Fahlman, Inventor Of The Emoticon, Calls Emoji ‘Ugly’ :’-(‘
[7] Alex Hern, ‘Don’t know the difference between emoji and emoticons? Let me explain’
[8] Unicode.org, ‘Chronology of Unicode Version 1.0’, Unicode (online), , accessed 21 September 2016, 13 February 2009
[9] Unicode.org, ‘Summary Narrative’, Unicode (online), , accessed 21 September 2016, 1 October 2006
[10] Unicode.org, ‘The Unicode Consortium’, Unicode (online), , accessed 21 September 2016, 30 September 2016
[11] BBC, ‘Headscarf emoji proposed by 15-year-old Saudi girl’, BBC.com (online), <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37358719>, accessed 27 September 2016, 14 September 2016
[12] Lisa Wade, ‘Head Covering as a Common Practice’,
<https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/03/25/head-covering-as-a-common-practice/>, accessed 28 September 2016, 25 March 2012
And Human Right Watch, ‘Questions and Answers on Restrictions on Religious Dress and Symbols in Europe’,
, accessed 28 September 2016, 21 December 2001
[13] Michael Lipka, ‘Graph provided by Spring 2016 Global Atitudes Survey, in Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world’, Pew Research Center (online), <http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/>, accessed 29 September 2016, 22 July 2016
[14] Pew Research Center, ‘Restrictions on Women’s Religious Attire’, Pew Research Center (online),
, accessed 29 September 2016, 5 April 2016
[15] Pew Research Center, ‘Restrictions on Women’s Religious Attire’, 5 April 2016
[16] BBC, ‘Headscarf emoji proposed by 15-year-old Saudi girl’
[17] Enterpreneur, ‘Nonprofit Corporation’, The Enterpreneur.com (online), , accessed 28 September 2016, 2016
