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3 St. Louisans Talk Emoji, Online Etiquette And Navigating A Rapidly Evolving Visual Language

From left, Amber Hinsley, Lauren Terbrock-Elmestad and Tyler Kelley joined Monday's talk show.
Evie Hemphill | St. Louis Public Radio
From left, Amber Hinsley, Lauren Terbrock-Elmestad and Tyler Kelley joined Monday's talk show.
From left, Amber Hinsley, Lauren Terbrock-Elmestad and Tyler Kelley joined Monday's talk show.
Credit Evie Hemphill | St. Louis Public Radio
From left, Amber Hinsley, Lauren Terbrock-Elmestad and Tyler Kelley joined Monday's talk show.

Emoji have come a long way in recent years, with smiling faces and simple thumbs up now vastly outnumbered by a wide range of visual expressions available for digital use. As this visual language infuses contemporary forms of communication more and more, emoji present both opportunities and challenges in humans’ abilities to understand each other.

On Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, St. Louis Public Radio reporter Jeremy D. Goodwin talked with three St. Louisans whose areas of expertise have them thinking a lot about how to use emoji and related digital tools well.

Joining the discussion were rhetorician Lauren Terbrock-Elmestad, a PhD student and graduate instructor at St. Louis University; Amber Hinsley, an associate professor in SLU’s Department of Communication; and Tyler Kelley, co-founder and chief strategist at the St. Louis-based digital storytelling firm SLAM!

Listen to the conversation:

St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Alex Heuer, Emily Woodbury, Evie Hemphill, Lara Hamdan and Alexis Moore. The engineer is Aaron Doerr and production assistance is provided by Charlie McDonald.

Send questions and comments about this story to feedback@stlpublicradio.org.

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Evie Hemphill joined the St. Louis on the Air team in February 2018. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 2005, she started her career as a reporter for the Westminster Window in Colorado. Several years later she went on to pursue graduate work in creative writing at the University of Wyoming and moved to St. Louis upon earning an MFA in the spring of 2010. She worked as writer and editor for Washington University Libraries until 2014 and then spent several more years in public relations for the University of Missouri–St. Louis before making the shift to St. Louis Public Radio.