Skin Tone Emoji and Sentiment on Twitter

TL;DR

This study analyzes the geographic and sentiment patterns of skin tone emoji use on Twitter, revealing correlations with population skin tones and negative sentiment trends associated with darker skin tones.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale analysis of skin tone emoji usage and its relationship with sentiment and demographics across different countries.

Findings

Skin tone emoji usage aligns with local population skin tones.

Darker skin tone emoji correlate with more negative sentiment.

Global negative sentiment increases with darker skin tones.

Abstract

In 2015, the Unicode Consortium introduced five skin tone emoji that can be used in combination with emoji representing human figures and body parts. In this study, use of the skin tone emoji is analyzed geographically in a large sample of data from Twitter. It can be shown that values for the skin tone emoji by country correspond approximately to the skin tone of the resident populations, and that a negative correlation exists between tweet sentiment and darker skin tone at the global level. In an era of large-scale migrations and continued sensitivity to questions of skin color and race, understanding how new language elements such as skin tone emoji are used can help frame our understanding of how people represent themselves and others in terms of a salient personal appearance attribute.