Communicating emotions in instant messaging, an overview

Over the years, instant messaging has evolved from simply delivering textual messages from one person to another, to a concept in which rich content can be shared across remote participants. However, despite the importance of technologies like instant messaging in interpersonal interaction, communication of affect (and other emotional expressions) is not well supported by current technology. This paper shows that although the problem of emotion communication in instant messaging was subject of several studies, the field is still in premature condition. Different emotion capture and expression methods have been researched, but attempts to combine them are rather scarce. Also, only a limited set of methods have been researched, compared to the general field of emotion communication. Finally, problems arising with cultural differences have hardly been taken into account in past research.