Lindsey and I had a fun conversation about how difficult it would be to create emojis to represent the entire North American continent, much as it would be for Gerbet to create emojis representative of all of the continent of Africa.

Before this activity, I never thought about emojis and how many do not feel represented. I really liked reflecting and diving deeper with this activity!

Throughout this activity, I learned how emojis vary across cultures, highlighting their role in digital communication. It was a fun and clever way to appreciate and articulate cultural diversity through these universal symbols.

Throughout the activity we had in class, hosted by a classmate, Mirei, we learned how a simple emoji could entail the broad diverse culture. I was able to represent South Korea as a single emoji, by giving my classmates why this emoji symbolizes Korea. It is a blend of colorful symbol used in Korean palaces. I enjoyed the activity which was by comparing an instagram post on recent emoji designer versus a basic emojis on keyboards. 

Since the topic was familiar to everyone, it was easy to discuss. Related to this activity, we also discussed how the same emojis can be interpreted differently in different cultures. Since communication over the Internet has become essential these days, I think it is meaningful to talk about cross-cultural communication from the perspective of emojis.

I experienced an enhanced version of this activity with several other reviewers in a graduate course. The enhancement came through interpreting several emoji to grasp that there isn't one interpretation, watching a short video on the origins of emoji and looking at data about country-specific contributions to emoji, and looking at the original Japanese set of emoji. We also created an emoji to represent a cultural facet of ourselves and shared our creations with the group. The enhanced activity addressed cultural self-awareness and cultural worldview frameworks to a greater degree than the original. It took nearly 75 minutes but was well worth the time spent and created a buzz among students and instructors alike both during and after the session.