Complex and ambiguous: Understanding sticker misinterpretations in instant messaging

Stickers, though similar in appearance to emoji, have distinct characteristics because they often contain animation, diverse gestures, and multiple characters and objects. Stickers can convey richer meaning than emoji, but their complexity and placement constraint may result in miscommunication. In this paper, we aim to understand how people perceive emotion in stickers, as well as how miscommunication related to sticker occurs in actual chat contexts. Toward this goal, we conducted an online survey (n = 87) and in-depth interviews (n = 28) in South Korea. We found emotional and contextual aspects of sticker misinterpretation. In particular, emotion misinterpretation mostly happened due to stickers’ ambiguous (multiple) facial/bodily expressions and different perception of dynamism in gestures. In real chat settings, there were also contextual misinterpretations where senders and receivers differently interpret stickers’ visual representation/reference, or/and corresponding textual messages. Based on these findings, we provide several practical design implications such as context awareness support in sticker interaction.