AlphabetAlphabet: A Biannual Academic Journal on Language, Literary, and Cultural Studies
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2025): Alphabet, Volume 08, Number 02

Functions of Emojis in Indonesian College Students' Online Communication on Social Media X

Dewi, Amanda Kusuma (Unknown)
Sukaton, Ounu Zakiy (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
19 Jan 2026

Abstract

With the advent of communication technology, emojis have become inseparable in online communication, acting as paralinguistic elements in written online communication. This study investigates how emojis contribute to online written communications and their prominent functions, specifically in Indonesian college students' communication observed from reply posts in the X automated base account, "@collegemfs," a communication hub for college students across Indonesia. This study utilized a mixed-method approach, a quantitative method to interpret the emoji functions, and a qualitative method to observe the most frequently used emojis and their functions. Results show that emojis contribute to online written communication in the community by reflecting the expressive, interpretative, and referential functions as primary functions, and the emphatic, politeness, structural, relational, and aesthetic functions as secondary functions. The most prominent functions found are the expressive primary function (60.8% of all data) and the emphatic secondary function (85.7% of all data), with the "loudly crying emoji" being the most prevalent emoji used in the community.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

alphabet

Publisher

Subject

Arts Humanities Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Social Sciences

Description

Alphabet is an open-access, biannual journal aimed at advancing and disseminating the state-of-the-art knowledge on language, literary and cultural studies. It instills the etymological spirit of the word alphabetos which means learning or lore acquired through reading. Reading, in this context, ...