There is a growing body of academic research looking at all aspects of emoji usage 😍🌴😀👍

If you have a mobile phone made in the last eight years, or if you've used social media, you're likely familiar with emoji. The colorful icons, first available in Japan in the 1990s, are ubiquitous and an increasingly common part of our online lives. They have all but replaced emoticons, their punctuation-based precursors, though kaomoji (more detailed emoticons, originating in Japan) such as ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ still enjoy popularity in some corners of the internet. Perhaps the most compelling example of emoji popularity was the "face with tears of joy" emoji 😂 being selected as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2015 - a fact you will find in the introduction of many academic papers on the topic.