Abstract As digital interactions become more global, individuals who bring divergent practices ‘to the keyboard’ must interact with other participants who come to the digital space with different cultural norms and expectations. This study explores the interface between local expectations and global practice through emoji use in online gaming – a venue which brings people from around the globe together on a common ‘playing field’. Since emojis were originally designed to tap into universals in human experience and expression, they are a ready-made resource through which individuals can integrate their culture-based expectations with communicative norms that are rooted in the common denominators of the (global) digital environment. Using live chat data from the game streaming platform Twitch, this study examines emojis posted to the open chat room during game streams of one female and one male gamer. The analysis examines the ways that participants use these semiotic images to orient toward gaming communities of practice and claim identities within gaming groups. It also explores whether emoji use is affected by the gender of the streamer. Analysis indicates that participants in the man’s stream differ from participants woman’s stream in the ways they use emojis to claim community membership and employ emojis as phatic devices.

中文翻译：

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转瞬即逝：表情符号在形成数字社区中的作用

摘要随着数字互动变得越来越全球化，“差异化”的个人必须与其他以不同文化规范和期望进入数字空间的参与者互动。这项研究通过在在线游戏中使用表情符号来探索本地期望与全球实践之间的接口，该场所将全球各地的人们聚集在一个共同的“运动场”上。由于表情符号最初是为在人类体验和表达中普及而设计的，因此它们是现成的资源，个人可以通过其将基于文化的期望与基于（全球）数字环境共同点的交流规范进行整合。使用来自游戏流媒体平台Twitch的实时聊天数据，这项研究调查了在一名女性和一名男性玩家的游戏过程中张贴到开放聊天室的表情符号。该分析检查了参与者使用这些符号图像定向到练习游戏社区并声称游戏组中的身份的方式。它还探讨了表情符号的使用是否受彩带性别的影响。分析表明，男人流中的参与者与参与者女人流中的不同之处在于，他们使用表情符号来声明社区成员身份并使用表情符号作为阶段性设备。