Emoji-text relations on the X social networking service: studying official accounts of Korean artists

This qualitative research studied the application of status and relations between emoji and text in posts from official X (formerly Twitter) social networking service accounts of Korean artists to identify dominant statuses and interactions. Data was collected from 100 posts comprising English language text and emojis on five official X social media accounts of Korean artists, each with over one million followers. The tweets were posted between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2024, with convenience sampling used due to time constraints. Most content pertained to promotional event announcements. Data was analyzed and categorized according to image-text relations. Results were that equal status predominated (62%), with 38% reflecting inequality. Additionally, the predominant relation was elaboration (77%) with 23% using the extension relation. By contrast, no enhancement or projection relations were identified. The most frequent emoji used in each relation was elaboration (exposition) to restate a word or phrase as an action, while the commonest use in elaboration (exemplification) was bullet points for related topics in announcements. The most popular extension relation use was for artist representation.