Epistemic Signals and Emoticons Affect Kudos

Abstract

Our focus is on the interaction between emoticon use and epistemic hedges in the perception of individual contributions to discourse (and posters of those contributions) as deserving of kudos for their input. The communities with English as a lingua franca that we explore consist of self-motivated contributors to user-fora supported by a major multinational with a software technology company. User categories are determined by a few orthogonal classifications: employees, novice users, and experts; recipients of kudos vs. non-recipients of kudos; etc. We explore the interaction between social signals and signals of certainty in content. Among the effects reported are the negative influence of epistemic hedges used in posting on propensity for others in the community to accord kudos to such postings, but a positive influence of the same in interaction with the use of emoticons.