Reaction buttons as backchannels

Abstract

Abstract In spoken conversation, backchannels — responses like mhm , oh , wow — serve interpersonal and organizational roles, investing in rapport and helping order turns. Backchannels have also been found to arise in digital messaging. Additionally, in recent years, private messaging applications like WhatsApp offer a reaction button feature allowing users to press a previous message and pin an emoji to it. This study explores reaction buttons to examine whether they are always used as backchannels, and if they correspond to backchannel characteristics identified in spoken conversation. The study analyzes 158 reaction button occurrences in a small corpus of WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage exchanges. It compares them to foregoing definitions and characteristics of spoken backchannels, finding that almost all analyzed reactions fit backchannel criteria, with the exception of three transactional uses of 👍. Also, one of the most cited and sequentially systematic functions of spoken backchannels — the continuer — was not observed among the data. Thus, while reaction buttons seem largely related to backchanneling as previously conceived, they may show shifting practices, wherein their organizational impact is secondary, but their social role is indispensable.