Blue Heart Emoji Ignites International Debate

Who would have thought a single blue heart emoji could spark such a controversy online?

When, yesterday, for the first time since World War II, a democratic party in Germany accepted the help of a far-right party to achieve a majority in a vote supporting harsher migration policies, discourse online took a different turn.

In their attempt to support the people demonstrating against the cooperation that led to the vote by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), American democratic supporters repeatedly commented blue heart emojis, unknowingly aligning themselves with the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) instead.

The controversial vote

The CDU motion passed with a narrow majority after the other two coalition partners openly opposed the terms, pointing to a lack of fundamental democratic values.

This decision to allow the far-right AFD to influence the vote marked a departure from previous statements made by chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz just earlier this month. Merz justified his decision in a press conference, claiming that a vote does not become wrong simply because the wrong people vote for it.

Over the past weeks, protests for democracy and against the AFD, which is classified as a right-wing extremist in parts of Germany, have been widespread. Additionally, national election candidate Alice Weidel has been heavily criticised for her open collaboration with X CEO Elon Musk, who recently attended multiple election campaign events.

Last evening, shortly after the announced vote, people gathered to protest in front of the CDU headquarters in Berlin. This footage, along with other nationwide demonstrations in the past weeks, quickly gained international attention on social media platforms like TikTok.

While many commenters voiced their support and admiration for the active role German citizens are playing, their use of emojis has caused confusion and irritation online.

In the United States, the blue heart emoji is associated with the Democratic Party and is often used on social media to signal political alignment and belief in democratic values. Conversely, in Germany, the blue heart emoji has become a symbol of support for the AFD, representing the party's color scheme.

So, when U.S. commenters posted blue hearts under footage of protests against the AFD, they unwillingly showed support for the opposing cause.

The Emotional Impact of Emojis

The use of emojis to convey implicit and explicit messages is an evolving field of study. Demian Stoianov, a PhD student from the University of Groningen, recently demonstrated the emotional impact of emojis for the first time.

In an experiment conducted last autumn, Stoianov explored how different emojis affected the processing of words. "We know something about processing words, something about processing pictures, and something about processing faces", Stoianov tells The Glass Room.

"But it was hard to compare faces and non-faces and whether the effects we saw before resulted from emotional faces or from emotional something else". However, Stoianov's study is one of the first to show that emojis have a measurable influence on participant's responses.

So, what does this discovery mean for the blue heart debate?

Cultural variations

Generally, people expect emojis to be a universal form of communication. But, as Stoianov explains, this assumption can be misleading. "I think it's a cross-cultural thing that a smiling face is seen as positive and a crying one as negative," Stoianov says. "But there are also cultural dependencies. Emojis differ from country to country and vendor to vendor. We find examples where they mean different things depending on culture, age, or how deep someone is in digital culture."

Using emojis in political communication is an increasingly popular area of study. The affiliation of certain emojis to specific causes has opened new possibilities for so-called paralinguistics - communication without using words.

Until recently, the focus was on self-explanatory symbols like flags. Using less direct emojis, such as the rainbow flag for LGBTQ+-related topics or the watermelon for Palestine, is mainly understood by specific target audiences. This makes it difficult to make more general statements about individual emojis.

"It's just another layer of things", Stoianov explains. "Most people worldwide are unfamiliar with this meaning."

What’s next?

This lack of universal understanding can be frustrating. Dominik Leese, a German University student, was in disbelief when he first saw how many U.S. commenters had posted blue hearts under protest footage supporting democracy in Germany. "I think Americans don't even think of questioning the context of the protest in Germany. They just assume the blue hearts are in favour of democracy, even though they are unknowingly supporting the far-right", Leese tells The Glass Room.

Leese hopes that people will educate themselves about the current political situation in other countries. "Only then," he says, "can you understand the codes the far-rights are using".

This challenge is not only for researchers but for global audiences as well. "It's a vast field, and you can study so much about emojis. It's just the beginning," Stoianov says. Nevertheless, he thinks the significance of emojis will become increasingly central in studying online communication. "The number of papers on emojis doubles every year. When I started, it was about 1,000 per year; now it's more than 5,000".

Listen to Dominik Leese's full voice message.