The 12-year-old from Fairfax, Va., has been charged with threatening her school after police said she posted a message on Instagram in December laden with gun, bomb and knife emojis. It read in part:
Killing ?
“meet me in the library Tuesday”
? ? ?
A grand jury in New York City recently had to decide whether ? ? represented a true threat to police officers. A Michigan judge was asked to interpret the meaning of a face with a tongue sticking out: :P. Emoji even took a turn in the Supreme Court last year in a high-profile case over what constitutes a threat.
I seriously expected this article to be nothing more than a load of click-bait BS. To my surprise after reading through I can see how emojis and other forms of iconography that are now common in our communications can affect and obscure the writer’s intended meaning.
It’s not an entirely new concept. The written word is always open to interpretation by the reader but with such regular use of acronyms, emojis and smileys today it can muddy the waters even more.
Very interesting.