Open research questions in Digital Communication and Language

What the literature leaves open

• This study is limited to one month of TikTok Live observations; therefore, future research should examine longer observation periods and compare language practices across different live commerce platforms.

  Language Variation of Generation Z in TikTok Live Buying and Selling Interactions: A Linguistic Economics Perspective · 2026 · DOI

• Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping workplace communication, yet whether AI-assisted writing changes how recipients actually behave, and through what channel, remains unknown.

  Playful AI in Professional Email: A Field Experiment on Tone and Recipient Engagement · 2026

• Future research may address these limitations by examining larger and more diverse samples from different Iraqi universities and educational backgrounds. Additionally, future studies could explore other emoji categories, including gestures, objects, and symbols, while also considering the influence of variables such as age, cultural background, and digital communication experience.

  Gender-Based Differentiation in Emoji Identification among Iraqi EFL University Students · 2026 · DOI

• csv", encoding='utf-8') index=False, Future work may focus on integrating advanced NLP feature engineering and machine learning methods, such as TF-IDF, word embeddings, or Decision Tree-based classification, to enable comparative analysis with prior mental health detection studies and to extend the analytical applicability of the collected dataset. However, the extracted data was limited to publicly available tweets obtained through the X API and depended on keyword- based filtering, which may not fully represent broader mental health discussions on social media.

  Implementation of Apache Airflow for Pipeline Automation: Case Study of Mental Health Issues on Social Media X · 2026 · DOI

• Future research could examine a larger and more diverse sample of influencers, incorporating additional demographic variables such as age, bilingualism, and sexual orientation. Nevertheless, this study provides a solid foundation for further investigation of digital CS among Lithuanian influencers.

  Digital code-switching in Lithuania: a mixed-methods study of influencers’ Instagram captions · 2026 · DOI

• For the future research, the following is recommended to be explored, first, the educational and emotional perspectives of online memes in different cultural, social contexts, as well as demographics. Second, a comparative study between different social media platforms could be done instead of examining them together, for instance, TikTok versus Instagram could be more insightful since the nature of the platform differs as well as the format and engagement levels. Third, applying mixed methods, qualitative method, in this case would be beneficial is establishing some insights and deep analysis about the users’ memes usage regarding civic issues. Lastly, adding the variable of algorithmic exposure would be very insightful and richer as memes not only used as means of entertainment, but they are also now perceived as more meaningful tools of casual learning and public discussions. Additionally, it is recommended to measure the media education and media literacy impact on the youth understanding of memes and its usage. Also, a comparative study based on age could be beneficial and more insightful to examine the different levels of engagement as well as recognizing the efficient stages for media literacy education introduction. Another comparative study could be explored regarding the role of the educational systems in introducing as well as expediating the impact of memes in diverse matters and how education in general influence transmedia literacy, especially in Egypt compared to other countries.

  Memeing the Masses: Internet Memes as Educational Tools and Expressions of Public Opinion on Social Media · 2026 · DOI

• The current study offered an insightful perspective regarding memes as acting as an impactful educational tool, nevertheless, it did face several limitations. First, reliance on purposive sampling hinders the idea of generalizability of the study findings as well as the number of the respondents contributed. Second, the data was affected by the self-reported measures that might affect the participants objectivity and contributing to the research bias and subjective analyses, especially since it examined an emotional variable. Third, using cross-sectional survey design limits the idea of claiming some causality between meme engagement and emotional responses.

  Memeing the Masses: Internet Memes as Educational Tools and Expressions of Public Opinion on Social Media · 2026 · DOI

• Future work could investigate causal or intervention-based frameworks that explicitly model exposure and amplification, and study how algo- rithmic ranking and human behaviour interact to generate viral cascades. Alternative viral- ity definitions based on survival analysis, hazard rates, or multi- level engagement bands could be explored to test robustness and to address questions about time to peak or sustained attention.

  Early Multimodal Prediction of Cross-Lingual Meme Virality on Reddit: A Time-Window Analysis · 2026 · DOI

• Issue 6 Exploring the Platform Domain: To understand how platform-specific values influence code- switching practices on other platforms, future studies should focus on more social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Language choice and code-switching habits across different language groups could be studied in the future by linking them to different social media platforms.

  Digital Sociolinguistics: Analyzing Code-Switching Behaviors among Multilingual Users on Social Media Platforms · 2026 · DOI

• The study extends the limited literature on the nature of translanguaging in lingua franca social contexts and demonstrates the uniqueness of the translanguaging resources employed by ELF users.

  Translanguaging in a beauty salon · 2024 · DOI

• However, to date, few studies have examined the phenomenon at the morpho-pragmatic interface in adequate detail or depth; nor has any researcher addressed their formational and motivational similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese RAI s.

  A Morpho-Pragmatic Study of Roman Alphabetic Initialisms (RAI s) on Chinese and Japanese Social Media · 2023 · DOI

• Additionally, while multimodal course materials have contributed to learners’ ICC, the link between students’ embodied modes (gestures, facial expressions, body movements) and ICC remains under-explored.

  Embodying intercultural communicative competence in French L2 video reflections: Illustrating skills, knowledge, and attitudes · 2023 · DOI

• Few studies have investigated how family members present their emotional expression in their daily communications, what role home/heritage language(s) actually play in communicating their emotional needs, and how these emotional expressions are manifested in their lived experiences and socialisation practices.

  ‘妈妈, I miss you ’: Emotional multilingual practices in transnational families · 2022 · DOI

• Whereas previous research has focused on digital practices in families, on multilingual practices on internet platforms, or on language transmission processes in families, we argue that future research should focus more on the digital multilingual family and explore the role of languages as embedded in digital media activities and interwoven in everyday family life.

  What’s in the family app? · 2020 · DOI

• Machine coding was used to answer “What types of tweets did users contribute to #Edchat?” and human coding to answer “What purposes are observable in these tweets?” The results showed that #Edchat has been used effectively for exploring ideas but underutilized for sharing emotions—with mixed results for capitalizing on the advantages of Twitter’s online environment.

  Revisiting How and Why Educators Use Twitter: Tweet Types and Purposes in #Edchat · 2019 · DOI

• Abstract Television interpreting, although serving the largest population of users, is underexplored compared with conference interpreting or community interpreting by the academic community, not to mention any systematic, in-depth analysis foregrounding or tailored to its salient multimodal features.

  From text to ensemble: A multimodal study of television interpreting with cases from Chinese TV · 2019 · DOI

• The papers highlight the intricacies inherent in identity and community construction in digitized contexts through the exploration of linguistic and semiotic resources, languages, and understudied cultural contexts as varied as the use of emojis to defy bias against female gamers online, initiation of repair on expert-authored blogs on weight loss, negotiation of language ideologies on Ukrainian Twitter, and the construction of political dissent on Arabic Syrian Facebook.

  Society in digital contexts: New modes of identity and community construction · 2019 · DOI

• Although we can establish the use of technology and, therefore, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) as the cause of most cases in analogy with what happens with native speakers, further investigation is needed and new research with similar control groups where explicit corrective feedback is given could give us more clues about the behaviour of the participants.

  Interlanguage or Technology when Using English as Vehicular Language: what influences students productions online? · 2018 · DOI

• The link between secondary emotions and searchers' evaluative judgments, and lack of evidence of any relationships between secondary emotions and other search process variables, point to the strengths and weaknesses of self‐reported emotion measures in understanding searchers' affective experiences.

  Toward a model of emotions and mood in the online information search process · 2014 · DOI

• Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Barcelona, says that the borderlines between communication through mass-media and all other forms and of communication are not clearly defined.

  Mass Self-Communication · 2012

• The study found evidence of potential teaching and learning episodes related to (a) translation, (b) language usage, (c) relationships between language and culture, and (b) teaching and learning processes, and pointed to several interesting avenues for further research on informal language teaching and learning in globalized online spaces.

  TESOL after YouTube : fansubbing and informal language learning · 2010

• While known and credible companies could use shortened, original, and entertaining SMS language, little known companies or ordinary spokepersons should refrain from doing so.

  The Impact of SMS Advertising on Members of a Virtual Community · 2008 · DOI

• The overall results (a) support the presence of participant–observer differences in CMC, (b) show that the presence of anticipated future interaction moderates said differences, and (c) provide mixed evidence that participant and observer interpretations of relational messages converge over time.

  Relational Communication in Computer-Mediated Interaction Revisited: A Comparison of Participant–Observer Perspectives · 2007 · DOI

• Taking into account the above mentioned features of electronic discourse and the general characteristics of the Internet as an instant and unpretentious medium, where physical and social identity is no longer important, we can assume that further study of this variety of language will also disclose some features of the authentic spoken informal Lithuanian language.

  Bendravimas internetu : kalbėjimas rašant · 2000 · DOI

• And while many studies cited in this volume and in the literature fit one or more of the general terms sketched above, the only investigation using all of them has been limited to a comparative study of the portrayal of education in the press and mass fiction of ten countries (Gerbner, ~964b).

  Toward “Cultural Indicators”: The analysis of mass mediated public message systems · 1969 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Digital Communication and Language

• Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. · American Psychologist · 1984 · 1,642 citations
• Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform · New Media & Society · 2020 · 441 citations
• The formation of group norms in computer-mediated communication · Human Communication Research · 2000 · 357 citations
• The Anthropology of Online Communities · Annual Review of Anthropology · 2002 · 305 citations
• Emoji rhetoric: a social media influencer perspective · Journal of Marketing Management · 2018 · 218 citations
• Association of “#covid19” Versus “#chinesevirus” With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter: March 9–23, 2020 · American Journal of Public Health · 2021 · 189 citations
• Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing · Computers in Human Behavior · 2021 · 170 citations
• Social media as a language learning environment: a systematic review of the literature (2008-2019) · Computer Assisted Language Learning · 2021 · 117 citations
• Revisiting How and Why Educators Use Twitter: Tweet Types and Purposes in #Edchat · Journal of Research on Technology in Education · 2019 · 103 citations
• Public attitudes and sentiments toward ChatGPT in China: A text mining analysis based on social media · Technology in Society · 2023 · 101 citations

Most recent work

• The semiotics of emojis & emoticons: Social hierarchies, platform preferences, and functional implications in digital discourse · Language & Communication · 2026
• Public sentiment toward traditional mental health providers and AI alternatives: a mixed-methods analysis of 2025 multilingual X discourse · Frontiers in Human Dynamics · 2026
• What is “conversational” about conversational technologies, products, and services? Insights from conversation analysis · Annual Review of Applied Linguistics · 2026
• When Social Media Reshapes Academic English: Digital Register Drift and Hybrid Communication among Vietnamese EFL Students · Education Language and Sociology Research · 2026
• Language materials development in a digital age · 2026
• Early Multimodal Prediction of Cross-Lingual Meme Virality on Reddit: A Time-Window Analysis · 2026
• To smile or not to smile? Emoji-enhanced chatbots, brand coolness, and behavioral intention · Journal of Marketing Communications · 2026
• SOCIAL MEDIA LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGY: EVOLUTION AND IMPACT ON COMMUNICATION · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
• Unrealistic Feedback in Socially Prescriptive Speech Technologies · International Journal of Applied Linguistics · 2026
• EMOJI AS DIGITAL PARALINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026

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