5 The first text messages had a maximum length of 160 characters, including blank spaces between words. The year 1982 marked the first appearance of the smiley face and frowny face emoticons. ONLINE RESOURCES Great icons Memes not only funny stories to arise: sorgere miscommunication: problema di comunicazione laughing out loud: ridere forte array: schiera forecast: previsione frowny: corrucciato 20 NEW FORMS OF COMMUNICATION A revolution in instant communication When text messages revolutionised the world of communication giving people the chance to communicate in a written form in an instant way, three problems arose: first, sending long text messages was expensive ; second, writing was much more time-consuming than speaking; and third, written communication was much more subject to miscommunication. Over the course of the following years, different solutions were found. Abbreviations and acronyms To solve the problem of lengthy text messages, abbreviations started being used. An abbreviation is when two words are shortened and put together to form a new one. They remove (or change) unnecessary parts of the words while keeping the meaning clear, for example like Idunno for I don t know, cause for because, or l8r for later. The following step was agreeing on a whole new list of acronyms which allowed people to communicate a longer concept in a few letters, just to make everything faster. Acronyms are words formed from the first letters of the words that make up the phrase CommuniCation anD PSyCHoLogy or expression. In instant messaging, acronyms are now the norm, such as: TMI (too much information), LOL (laughing out loud), and BFN (bye for now). Emoticons and emojis When written communication is fast and almost in real-time, there is the risk of passing on unwanted or unclear messages. No tone of voice, gesture, or facial expression can reinforce the way we would like our message to be understood, so misinterpretation is a real possibility. To reduce this risk, emoticons and emojis were created to add contextual emotional meaning. It all started with emoticons, emotion icons , visual representations of facial expression using characters (usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters) to express a person s feelings, mood, or reaction. The digital world then further evolved, and small digital images could finally be inserted in text messages, allowing for a whole new array of expressions, contexts, and messages to be conveyed visually and instantly. Emojis (from the Japanese words e, picture, and moji, character) first appeared on the scene in the late 1990s in Japan, where mobile phone companies, inspired by symbols used in manga comics and Japanese weather forecasts, first used them for the teen mobile market.