Emoji are the language of our online era, the thumbs-up to a question, the wink to our wit. They're a splash of color in black and white communication, conveying things mere words often cannot. We send emoji to improve upon, even expand, our words and bring emotion—affection, frustration, love, anger—to the conversation. Now, like the tweets, posts, and texts that are a crucial part of the way we communicate today, emoji, and their brethren emoticons, are finally getting their due in court. And like everything we love online, it's complicated, kind of.
Several recent arrests and prosecutions have included, at least in part, emoji. At the beginning of the recent Silk Road trial of Ross Ulbricht, US District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled "the jury should note the punctuation and emoticons" in all evidence. (In the trial, attorneys then, quite literally, said "emoticon" when the symbols appeared in chat conversations.) In a case currently pending before the US Supreme Court, Anthony Elonis, a Pennsylvania man who was convicted for using Facebook posts to threaten his ex-wife, has claimed that a threatening post toward her was clearly meant in "jest" because he included a smiley sticking its tongue out.
None of these cases relied solely on the emoji, of course. Evidence, arrests, and prosecutions are far more complicated than that. But, as social media becomes increasingly important evidence for law enforcement, so too do emoji. When the digital symbol for a gun, a smile, or a face with stuck-out tongue comes up in court, they aren’t being derided or ignored.
(Adaptado de https://www.wired.com/2015/02/emoji-in-court-cases/)
Afirma‐se no texto que os emojis