Experts have revealed how sending emoji could get you arrested, following the release of the thrilling Netflix drama Adolescence.
In the show starring Stephen Graham, one of the key points is how the sinister double meanings of common emoji can be critical evidence in a police investigation.
Legal experts now say that the growing field of ’emoji forensics’ really has put criminals behind bars and helped innocent people avoid convictions.
From the animal emoji putting gang members in jail to the smiley face which revealed a sinister plot to fabricate evidence, sending one of these colourful icons could land you in a lot of trouble.
Legal experts say that emoji have been ‘flooding the legal system’, with more than 1,000 cases referencing them since 2010 in the US alone.
Sending an emoji can be evidence of an intent to commit a crime, an admission of guilt, or even a crime in itself in some cases.
But, with 3,790 unique emoji now in existence, even legal experts are struggling to keep up with the almost infinite variety of ways they can be used.
Professor Russel Kaschula, an expert on forensic linguistics at the University of the Western Cape, says: ‘Courtrooms need to keep up with the contemporary modes of communication as all crime is planned and committed through language.’
Experts have revealed how sending emoji could get you arrested, following the release of the thrilling Netflix drama Adolescence (pictured). In the show, one of the key points is how the sinister double meanings of common emoji can be critical evidence in a police investigation
How could sending an emoji be a crime?
There are no emoji that are illegal to send, but that doesn’t mean you can’t commit a crime by sending an emoji.
Just like any other form of communication, people can use emoji to threaten, harass, insult, pressure, or deceive somebody else.
The only difference between an emoji and a written message is that it takes a little extra work for courts to prove what the message was meant to say.
For example, sending the knife emoji to a total stranger probably wouldn’t count as threatening someone.
However, sending repeated knife or gun emoji to someone you knew or had previously argued with could definitely be seen as threatening behaviour.
Professor Kaschula calls these patterns of behaviour an ’emoji fingerprint’
Dr Zakeera Docrat, a forensic linguist from the University of the Western Cape and Professor Kaschula’s collaborator, says that knife and gun emoji are the most common emoji that arise in trials.
Legal experts say that sending a knife or gun emoji could be considered threatening behaviour in the right context
Last year, a student was expelled from the elite private Mulholland Drive elementary school after sending a gun emoji to a fellow student. The school argued that this counted as threatening behaviour
However, it’s not just obviously violent emoji that can be used in a criminal manner.
‘At the moment we are seeing a scourge of sexual violence and gender-based violence,’ says Dr Docrat.
‘Many perpetrators are opting to use non-verbal communication – emoji – with the view that if it is not in written text or speech there is no crime committed.
‘In these types of cases, there is an increase in the use of the aubergine, peach, strawberry, peeled banana, kiss emoji, red heart and the liquid drops.’
Sometimes the meaning of an emoji can be even more obscure, but this doesn’t stop forensic linguists from proving that a crime has taken place.
Professor Eric Goldman, a legal professional and expert on internet law who has been tracking emoji use in the courts, says this is particularly common in cases involving gang members.
Professor Goldman told MailOnline: ‘It’s usually a gang member who’s on trial and they’re concerned that someone’s going to testify against them.
‘So, in that context, they may send the potential testifier, or post publicly, the rat emoji.’
Legal experts say that there has been a ‘scourge’ of cases in which the peach, aubergine, water droplets, and cherry emoji are being used in cases of sexually harass women
Although the gang member hasn’t actually ‘said’ anything, what they meant was that any ‘rats’, a term for someone who turns on their friends, would face violence or even death.
‘So if the defendant in a criminal trial sends a rat emoji to a person who is potentially testifying against them that could be a crime of witness intimidation,’ says Professor Goldman.
How emoji can get you arrested
In the show Adolescence, a key moment comes when the detectives learn that certain emoji have a hidden slang meaning among teenagers.
Without spoiling the show for anyone who hasn’t watched it, this allows the detectives to work out a motive and provide evidence of criminal intent.
Just like in the show, there have been numerous court cases where the hidden meaning of emoji are used as evidence that someone has been involved in a crime.
As with the rat emoji, these cases often emerge within the secret codes used by gang members.
Professor Marcel Danesi, a linguistic anthropologist from the University of Toronto, says that emoji can be signs of gang allegiance or refer to specific crimes.
In Adolescence, a critical moment comes when DI Bascome, played by Ashley Walters (pictured), learns the hidden meaning of certain emoji. This allows them to determine a motive for the crime and build a legal case
In Adolescence, DI Bascome learns that manosphere-related emoji include the kidney bean emoji (left) and the ‘100 points’ emoji (right)
The high heel and crown emoji were critical pieces of evidence in a sex-trafficking case in 2019. The prosecution argued that these emoji were code for sex working
For instance, two ‘thumbs up’ emoji can actually mean that the member is a member of the Harlem Crips gang while the heart emoji is used to signify membership of the rival Bloods gang.
In one 2019 case, these kinds of hidden meanings were critical in securing a conviction in a sex-trafficking case.
In the trial, the court read a series of text exchanges between a woman and a man accused of acting as a pimp.
The suspected pimp sent a text asking the woman if she was ‘down for yo crown’ followed by a crown emoji and another message saying ‘teamwork make the dream work’ with high heels and bags of money emoji.
The prosecution successfully argued that the crown emoji was a reference to the pimp while the high heels and money emoji meant ‘wear your high heels to come make some money’.
How emoji can be evidence
In these cases, emoji were interpreted just like any other form of slang and were used as evidence within the wider context of the trial.
However, there are a few cases in which emoji can be a form of forensic evidence all of their own.
In 2021, a woman sued her employer on the grounds that an employee was sexually harassing her. However, the defence worked out that the evidence (pictured) was a fabrication based on a single emoji
In 2021, a woman named Andrea Rossbach attempted to sue her employer, Montefiore Medical Center, on the grounds that two members of staff had sexually harassed her.
During the trial, a critical piece of evidence was a screenshot of a text message supposedly sent to Ms Rossbach by the defendants which included a heart-eyes emoji.
Ms Rossbach claimed that she had received the text messages on her phone, an iPhone 5 which was running the operating system iOS 10.
What Ms Rossbach may have been unaware of was that emoji look different on every phone and operating system.
However, the heart-eye emoji in the texts submitted as evidence could only be rendered on an Apple device using iOS 13 or later.
In other words, there was no way that she could have received those texts on her device and the evidence must have been fabricated.
Not only was the case thrown out but Ms Rossbach was later forced to pay the defendant $150,000 in legal fees and other expenses.
Professor Goldman calls this phenomenon ‘cross-platform depiction diversity’ or ‘fragmentation’ and says it can be an extremely powerful tool for the legal system.
Different devices and operating systems display emoji differently. The heart-eyes emoji in the screenshots could not have been sent to the device the plaintiff claimed to use, showing that she had faked the messages. Legal experts call this type of evidence ’emoji forensics’
‘I call it emoji forensics. It’s kind of like carbon dating of trees,’ says Professor Goldman.
‘You can go back in time and assess whether or not the emoji being depicted in a screenshot are the right emoji based on the device that they were created on and what emoji looked like at that time.’
Why do we need emoji forensics?
Although emoji can be a powerful piece of evidence for prosecutors, they also come with their own set of problems.
This mainly stems from the fact that there is no established set of rules for how emoji are used or should be interpreted.
Those conflicting interpretations can become the centre of huge legal controversies.
For example, in 2022 notorious meme-stock investor Ryan Cohen took a 9 per cent stake in the company Bed Bath & Beyond.
Later that year, Cohen made a tweet responding to a negative article about Bed Bath & Beyond using the ‘moon face’ emoji.
In 2022 notorious meme-stock investor Ryan Cohen (pictured) was sued for securities fraud after posting a single emoji on Twitter
After buying a stake in Bed Bath & Beyond, Cohen responded to a post about the company with this message. An investor alleged that the moon face was a reference to the meme-stock phrase ‘to the moon’ and claimed that Cohen was attempting to drive up the share price for a ‘pump and dump’ scheme
However, an investor sued Cohen for securities fraud alleging that he was attempting to run a ‘pump and dump scheme’ to drive up the price of the company’s stock.
The investor claimed that the moon face was a clear reference to the meme-stock phrase ‘to the moon’, which means that the price of a stock will increase.
Although Cohen ultimately won the case, District of Columbia District Judge Trevor N. McFadden refused to throw out the case, claiming that the accusation was plausible.
Similarly, emoji can sometimes turn critical pieces of evidence on their heads.
A particularly high-stakes example comes from the ongoing legal battle between Justin Baldoni and his former co-star Blake Lively.
In January this year, Justin Baldoni brought a case against The New York Times, claiming that the paper had failed to include an emoji in a quote.
The Times quoted a message Baldoni sent to one of his publicists about a story critical of Blake Lively which said: ‘Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece’.
The insinuation was that Baldoni was happy the piece smeared Lively and was congratulating his publicist for her involvement.”
In January, Justin Baldoni (pictured) sued The New York Times on the grounds that the paper had omitted an emoji from a quote. Baldoni claimed that this emoji showed his message was sarcastic rather than malicious
The Times quoted a message Baldoni (right) sent to one of his publicists about a story critical of Blake Lively (left) which said: ‘Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece’. Baldoni claims that the text was actually followed by an upside-down smiley face, showing he was joking
Justin Baldoni claims that the upside-down smiley face meant he was not being serious. But there is currently no standardised way of interpreting emoji in legal cases. This is why some forensic linguists are calling for the development of ’emoji forensics’ as a field of study
However, Baldoni’s lawsuit claims that his text was actually followed by an upside-down smiley face, indicating that he was being sarcastic.
There are numerous examples of legal cases in which plaintiffs have argued that emoji need to be included for this exact reason.
But, without knowing what someone like Baldoni was thinking at the time, there is no definitive way to know what that emoji was actually meant to mean.
For instance, a smiley face in a threatening message might show the sender was joking, or it could be seen as a menacing grin showing criminal intent.
Figuring out which version of the story is correct could be the difference between someone going to jail and walking free.
This is why forensic linguistics experts are now starting to argue that emoji forensics needs to become its own discipline.
Professor Danesi told MailOnline: ‘This is a field that might be considered to be a branch of forensic linguistics, or the study of how messages that include emoji can be interpreted during a forensic investigation or a court case.’
ARE EMOJIS RUINING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Emojis may be a fun form of communication but they are destroying the English language, a recent study by Google has revealed.
Smiley faces, love hearts, thumbs up and other cartoon icons – rather than words – are the preferred method of communication by teenagers, who are considered the worst offenders regarding the decline in grammar and punctuation.
More than a third of British adults believe emojis are the reason for the deterioration in proper language usage, according to the study commissioned by the Google-owned site YouTube.
Emojis were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphic way. Now, Twitter feeds, text messages and Facebook posts are crammed with them
Of the two thousand adults, aged 16 to 65, who were asked their views, 94 per cent reckoned English was in a state of decline, with 80 per cent citing youngsters as the worst offenders.
The most common errors made by Brits are spelling mistakes (21 per cent), followed closely by apostrophe placement (16 per cent) and the misuse of a comma (16 per cent).
More than half of British adults are not confident with their command of spelling and grammar, the study also found.
Furthermore, around three-quarters of adults rely on emoji to communicate, in addition to a dependence on predictive text and spell checking.
The use of emojis has seeped into our culture to such an extent that the Oxford Dictionary’s ‘Word of the Year’ in 2015 wasn’t actually a word at all – it was the Face With Tears emoji, which shows just how influential the little graphic images have become.
They were first used by Japanese mobile phone companies in the late 1990s to express an emotion, concept or message in a simple, graphic way.
