Gender Impact on Emoji Sentiment Analysis Among Arabic Users in Digital Networks

Gender differences in usages and attitudes toward emoji have been reported previously in many different cultures, but not in Arabic. Here we examine the extent to which Arabic smart-device users, specifically females and males, interpret emoji sentiment differently. A manual sentiment annotation of 1034 emoji was applied by 28 Arabic native speakers (14 females, and 14 males) from seven different Arabic regions (Gulf, Egypt, Levant, Sudan, Magharib, Iraq, and Yemen). For the gender-based analysis, ten emoji groups were used to compare the differences in context-free emoji sentiment interpretation between Arabic women and men. Two approaches were used to perform the comparison: emoji sentiment score correlation coefficient and emoji sentiment score intensity-based clustering. The analysis reveals that, although the correlation results are moderate between the two genders' emoji sentiment interpretations, the clustering results reveal nuanced differences. Arabic females, mainly, indicate positivity through heart and facial expression emoji, while Arabic males indicate positivity through objects, nature, and some heart emoji. Regarding negativity, both genders tend to use facial expression emoji slightly more than any other type of emoji. Moreover, emoji representing flags are more neutral from the Arabic female perspective, while emoji representing symbols are more neutral from the Arabic male perspective.