On Stickers and Communicative Fluidity in Social Media

Social media platforms provide the key affordance of "communicative fluidity", where communication can be more seamless because of the multiple channels users can tap to express themselves. Besides just text therefore, users can communicate via photographs, videos, emoji, and stickers, on top of voice and video calls. The visual richness of social media enables users to make explicit feelings that cannot be articulated in words, while graphical representations such as stickers can lend messages an air of interpretability. Users can strategically and dynamically choose the best means by which to express their emotions, opinions, and intentions to attain communicative fluidity. However, the rigid scripting that underpins the vocabulary of social media can also compel users to communicate in ways that they find forced and inauthentic.