Abstract:
In 2016 the world wide Internet usage stood at 3,578,416,746 or 46.1% of the global population. Internet usage in China is currently at 22% of global usage or 52.2% of it’s country population (2016). In contrast, the United States has a higher market penetration (88.5%) however total users is dwarfed by China. The most popular texting software in China is weChat and it is used by 69% of this Internet population. This study identifies how and where Chinese and American students use emoticons, kaomojis and emojis to express emotions and cultural artifacts that each population subscribes to them. In turn, we will examine the variance between these artifact sets as they define the popular cultures. It is our belief that studying this issue on a qualitative basis using investigator led questionnaires will lead to identifying specific cultural differences.
