<![CDATA[Contemporary digital society, particularly the university student generation, increasingly builds and maintains interpersonal relationships through text-based media. This condition triggers a reduction in physical cues and gives rise to the mutation of conventional nonverbal communication into the virtual realm, known as digital kinesics. This study aims to qualitatively analyze how students interpret digital nonverbal cues to establish trust and mediated intimacy within instant messaging applications (such as WhatsApp and Telegram). Utilizing a descriptive qualitative approach, data were gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews and document analysis techniques via contextual chat screenshots from ten urban university student informants. The results indicate that trust formation in cyberspace no longer relies on physical presence; instead, it is constructed through three primary elements of digital kinesics: 1) affective visual representation through the precise selection of emojis, stickers, and animated GIFs; 2) digital chronemics, encompassing the rhythm of reply times, the duration of the "typing" status, and response delays; and 3) digital paralanguage, reflected in punctuation variations, capitalization choices, and word elongations within the text. These digital micro-cues are intuitively read by students to assess the sincerity, comfort, and emotional openness of their conversation partners. The novelty of this research demonstrates a communication compensation process, wherein the physical limitations of text media are overcome by students through their sensitivity in decoding digital kinesics, which is now recognized as a legitimate new nonverbal language structure determining the quality of Gen Z's interpersonal relationships.]]>
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