Emojis in Politics: How Tiny Icons Became Tools of Activism, Protest, and Propaganda
When protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 wanted to coordinate safely, they used emojis. When Black Lives Matter organizers spread their message across Twitter, โ๐ฟ became a symbol of solidarity that crossed language barriers instantly. When political campaigns ran digital advertising, they discovered that ๐บ๐ธ or ๐ฌ๐ง emojiEmoji
A Japanese word (็ตตๆๅญ) meaning 'picture character' โ small graphical symbols used in digital communication to express ideas, emotions, and objects. in subject lines boosted email open rates.
Emoji, designed for personal expression in private messaging, have become one of the most versatile and contested tools in contemporary political communication. Their visual simplicity, cross-language intelligibility, and ability to carry symbolic weight while evading automated content moderation have made them indispensable to movements across the political spectrum.
Solidarity and Protest Movements
Political movements have long used visual symbols โ flags, raised fists, specific colors โ to signal membership, demonstrate solidarity, and communicate across language barriers. Emoji have become digital extensions of this tradition.
โ Raised fist โ adopted globally as a symbol of resistance and solidarity, it predates digital communication by decades. In emoji form, with skin tone modifiers, it became central to Black Lives Matter communication in 2020. โ๐ฟ specifically appeared millions of times in social media posts and profile bios as a statement of solidarity.
๐ Rainbow flag โ the ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ rainbow flag emoji, added in UnicodeUnicode
Universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number to every character across all writing systems and symbol sets, including emoji. 9.0, became a universal shorthand for LGBTQ+ pride and advocacy. During Pride Month and in response to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, rainbow flag emoji proliferate across social media as visible markers of allyship or identity.
๐ฑ and โป๏ธ โ climate activism has its visual shorthand in green emojis, particularly during events like climate strikes and COP negotiations, where environmental activists coordinate globally using shared visual vocabulary.
๐ Watermelon โ the ๐ watermelon emoji has been widely adopted as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, particularly on platforms that have restricted certain overtly political content. Its colors โ red, green, white, and black โ mirror the Palestinian flag. The use of a seemingly innocent fruit as political symbol specifically to navigate content moderation is a sophisticated example of emoji's political utility.
Emoji as Protest Against Censorship
The watermelon example points to a broader pattern: communities use emoji to signal political meanings that would be flagged or removed if expressed in explicit text. This has been documented across contexts:
- Chinese social media users have developed elaborate emoji and character combinations to discuss censored political topics, using visual approximations of sensitive phrases that automated filters don't detect as readily
- During the Arab Spring, protesters used emoji flags ๐ณ๏ธ and map emojis to coordinate activity in ways that were harder to filter than explicit text
- In countries with restrictive speech laws, the ambiguity of emoji meaning provides a layer of plausible deniability
This is emoji as steganography โ hiding or disguising political messages within innocuous-seeming icons.
Political Campaigns and Emoji Strategy
Formal political campaigns and government communication operations have integrated emoji into their digital strategies with increasing sophistication.
During the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, campaigns tested emoji in email subject lines, social media posts, and digital advertising. The findings aligned with marketing research: emoji increased engagement metrics, particularly among younger voters.
Candidate accounts developed recognizable emoji signatures โ certain politicians became associated with specific emoji that supporters and critics alike would use to reference them. This visual shorthand was amplified through memes and social media culture in ways that campaign teams could not fully control.
Government accounts have used emoji to make official communications feel more accessible. NASA's social media presence ๐๐ is a well-regarded example of emoji use that makes scientific content engaging without feeling forced. Public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic used ๐ท and ๐ in communications aimed at reaching younger demographics.
Propaganda and Political Manipulation
The same properties that make emoji useful for protest and authentic advocacy make them useful for coordinated political manipulation.
Bot networks and inauthentic influence operations have used emoji in coordinated ways to artificially amplify certain political content, make positions appear more widely held than they are, or signal in-group membership among coordinated accounts. Research on state-sponsored influence operations has documented systematic emoji use as part of manipulation campaigns on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram.
The manipulation works partly because emoji signals are hard to trace. Coordinating 1,000 bot accounts to all use ๐จ in political posts about a specific topic creates the visual impression of organic alarm without the textual footprint that keyword-based detection would catch.
Emoji Bans and Content Moderation
Several emojis have been restricted or banned on specific platforms due to their association with political extremism or hate speech.
The ๐ธ frog emoji is well-documented as a case study. Pepe the Frog began as a neutral cartoon character, was appropriated by certain political communities online, and then the frog emoji itself became associated with those communities in ways that created moderation challenges. Context-dependent, the same character signals different things to different users.
Social media platforms have wrestled with how to moderate politically motivated emoji use without over-restricting expression. Keyword filters don't catch emoji patterns. Image recognition is computationally intensive and imprecise. The result is uneven enforcement that often disadvantages less technically sophisticated communities while allowing more sophisticated actors to operate with relative freedom.
Emoji in Electoral Law: An Emerging Issue
As emoji have entered political communication, legal questions have followed. Several jurisdictions have had to address whether specific emoji use in political communications constitutes prohibited campaign coordination, voter intimidation, or election interference.
Election authorities in multiple U.S. states have issued guidance on whether emoji constitute "campaign materials" subject to disclosure requirements. The ๐บ๐ธ American flag emoji in a political ad, for instance, raises questions about whether it qualifies as an official symbol use subject to specific regulations.
Courts in the United Kingdom and Australia have faced cases involving emoji use in political speech. The legal frameworks for these questions are still developing, and the outcomes vary significantly by jurisdiction.
The Unicode ConsortiumUnicode Consortium
The non-profit organization that develops and maintains the Unicode Standard, including the process for adding new emoji. Is Not Neutral
The political dimension of emoji extends to the Unicode Consortium itself โ the body that decides which characters enter the global standard.
Decisions about which national flags are included (all UN-recognized states, plus some disputed territories), which cultural symbols get emoji representations, and how gender and skin tone systems are designed are not politically neutral choices. The inclusion of ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ and ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ (transgender flag) was celebrated by LGBTQ+ advocates and criticized by some governments. Certain disputed national symbols remain contested in the standard.
Taiwan's ๐น๐ผ flag emoji has been the subject of documented suppression in Apple's implementation in mainland China โ where the flag is treated as a politically sensitive symbol. Unicode defines the character; platform vendors decide how to implement it.
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