Generation z‟s texting habits for expressing emotions in mobile mediated communication study case

Abstract

The new generation is addicted to social media, and this is becoming more prominent. There are numerous emojis and stickers available on social media that can be used to mimic how one is feeling when messaging. Accordingly, the study's goal is to gain a deeper understanding of generation z participants' messaging attitudes and behaviors while using emojis as emotional responses in mobile communicative interaction. Therefore, we hypothesized that Emojis act as emotional displays in representing and understanding meaning behind text messages. We used a quantitative method in this study by distributing a questionnaire to 40 freshmen English students (5 males and 35 females) at Djilali Bounaama University in Khemis Miliana. Therefore, the study findings confirmed the research hypothesis's validity.