Despite the growing adoption of remote working during the pandemic, there is a concern about the decreased efficiency in this type of work. One of the reasons for this is the lack of non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, in text-based communication. This lack of cues hampers effective communication and has a negative impact on work outcomes. However, emojis, which are commonly used on social media platforms, are emerging as an alternative form of non-verbal communication in virtual workspaces. This study aims to investigate the influence of emoji usage on developer participation and issue resolution in these virtual workspaces. GitHub issues were collected over a one-year period, and causal inference techniques were applied to measure the causal effect of emojis on issue outcomes. Confounding factors such as issue content, repository, and author information were controlled for. The results show that emojis can significantly reduce the time it takes to resolve issues and attract more user participation. Furthermore, the study explores the varying effects of emojis on different types of issues. These findings contribute to a better understanding of developer communities and provide insights into how to facilitate interactions and increase developer participation.
The Impact of Emoji on GitHub: Encouraging Developer Engagement and Resolving Issues (arXiv:2308.16360v1 [cs.CY])
