Emojis & Political Affiliations

Many of us use emojis as playful, lighthearted emblems of self-expression sprinkled into our messages. But emojis can also communicate a sense of gravity, especially when they serve as stand-ins for and reactions to real-world geopolitical phenomena of global consequence.

Emojis & Political Affiliations

Many of us use emojis as playful, lighthearted emblems of self-expression sprinkled into our messages. But emojis can also communicate a sense of gravity, especially when they serve as stand-ins for and reactions to real-world geopolitical phenomena of global consequence.

Given their global popularity, it’s no surprise that emojis are communicative tools that help people of all different beliefs and backgrounds signal to others what they stand for, whether in their online public presences or private spheres.

Read on to learn some of the ways people around the world use emojis to convey political affiliations.

🌻 Emojis For World Events

History is full of instances, moments, and eras that reorient global narratives and perspectives and spur organization and identification across political lines, giving rise to emoji usage that reflects these alignments.

2024 United States Presidential Election

Elections in countries around the world are prime examples of events that can raise tensions and spur increased usage of emojis as people align with a party or candidate that best represents their views and values—with the American presidential election of 2024 illustrating this point exceptionally well.

In the matchup between President Donald Trump and now former Vice President Kamala Harris, emoji users who supported Democratic candidate Harris adopted the 🥥 Coconut and the 🌴 Palm Tree as emojis to represent her and her platform, drawing from a viral soundbite.

These emojis popped up across various social platforms and even made an appearance in mainstream journalistic publications like Rolling Stone

Trump supporters had their fair share of emojis to express support for their candidate, such as the 🚂 Locomotive to represent the momentum of the “Trump Train” slogan as well as typical national symbols of the U.S., such as the 🦅 Eagle the 🇺🇸 Flag: United States.

While using an American flag emoji is not necessarily indicative of supporting Trump and the Republican party, academic research from 2022 found that usage of the American flag emoji in online messaging did come slightly more often from politicians with a Republican-leaning bent than from Democrat-identified ones. See the section on flag emojis below.

And it’s not just supporters of President Trump who have used emojis to refer to him.

Trump opponents throughout his history as both a U.S. presidential candidate since 2015 and U.S. president from 2017 onwards have chided him on social media with various emojis, with a popular one being the 🤡 Clown Face to express how they view his behavior and policies.

The 🍑 Peach also saw notable usage as a play on the word “impeachment,” the process that the then-first-term president underwent in late 2019 and early 2021.

Because of the association in the U.S. between the color red and the Republican Party, it was not surprising to see some claim during election season that the historically apolitical ❤️ Red Heart could and sometimes did become a symbol representing Republicanism, and by extension, President Trump.

A Substack article written by American journalist Taylor Lorenz asked the question "Is the Red Heart MAGA?" Some Democrats reportedly even swore off its usage for the time being, citing the association with Trump and “the ick” it gave them and opting for the Democrat-colored 💙 Blue Heart instead.

However, the widespread global popularity and broad use cases of the ❤️ Red Heart emoji make this use case atypical. The vast majority of instances of its usage online and in text were and continue to be broad-ranging expressions of love and affection.

The Israel & Palestine Conflict

Incidents of armed conflict and outbreaks of war can also drive the usage of specific emojis associated with the unrest.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza, one of many episodes in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, users on social media have used emojis to signal their affiliation with or sympathy for those suffering in the ongoing violence.

The 🇮🇱 Flag: Israel, the 💙 Blue Heart together with the 🤍 White Heart, and the ✡️ Star of David, a common symbol of Judaism, became especially prevalent emojis after October 7th. The 🎗️ Reminder Ribbon also began to be used to express hope for the safe return of hostages.

Meanwhile, those expressing sympathy with Palestinian victims of the Gaza invasion have typically opted for the 🇵🇸 Flag: Palestinian Territories, the combination of the ❤️ Red Heart, 💚 Green Heart, 🤍 White Heart, and 🖤Black Heart emojis to represent the flag’s colors, and the 🍉 Watermelon—a symbol of Palestine that has served as a reference to those same flag colors.

The War In Ukraine

Similarly, when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated with Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighboring country in February 2022, users on social media who stood with Ukraine moved to signal their support by adopting the 🇺🇦 Flag: Ukraine, a combination of the 💙 Blue Heart and the 💛 Yellow Heart for the flag’s colors, and the 🌻 Sunflower, the Ukrainian national flower and a symbol of strength, resilience, and solidarity with the country.

✊🏾 Ongoing Causes & Movements

Though many emojis spike in usage in a political context when particular isolated events occur, there are plenty of ongoing causes that can be represented equally well by emojis.

Of course, sometimes the momentum for these ongoing movements is strengthened or catalyzed by specific one-off events that help to bring attention to them, increasing politicized emoji usage.

Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter movement is an example of a continuing cause for which emojis help to signal one’s political leanings, identifications, and values, without necessarily relying on the context of any specific world events.

The ✊🏾Raised Fist: Medium-Dark Skin Tone or ✊🏿Raised Fist: Dark Skin Tone and the 🖤Black Heart and 🤎Brown Heart are often-used emojis for BLM, expressing black empowerment, solidarity, and community without being time-bound to a specific era.

But as with those emojis for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, emojis such as these are also more likely to see increased usage after events that catalyze reactions in the real world and online—including the death of George Floyd in May 2020, which ignited a wave of BLM protests centered in the United States.

Climate Change Activism

Climate change activism is typically less often linked to specific world events, but the recent high concentration of natural disasters and catastrophes—such as the “biblical” destruction of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina and the devastating fires in Los Angeles, for example—continue to ignite discourse around changing climate patterns and climate change activism.

Emojis such as the ♻️ Recycling Symbol, the 🌱 Seedling, the 💚 Green Heart, and globes such as the 🌎 Globe Showing Americas, the 🌍 Globe Showing Europe-Africa and 🌏 Globe Showing Asia-Australia, which may or may not be paired with the 🔥 Fire to indicate global warming—are common choices for people who want to draw attention to efforts to practice conservation, sustainability, and climate harm mitigation.

Women's Rights & LGBTQ Activism

Women’s rights advocates have their fair share of emojis, too. Obvious choices of emojis for people looking to express solidarity with feminist causes are the ♀️ Female Sign and the ​​👩 Woman, which see spikes in usage around International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8 every year.

These emojis and more, including the 💔 Broken Heart, ❤️ Red Heart, and the 😔Pensive Face have been associated with the #MeToo movement, a wave of activism that shed light on sexual harassment and violence heavily around 2017 and after, and also with the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., a response to President Donald Trump's first term inauguration.

In China, where much of the discourse around women’s rights and #MeToo was silenced, users sneakily changed the name of the movement to “Rice Bunny,” since its translation, mi tu (米兔), sounds phonetically like “Me Too”—giving rise to the usage of the 🍚 Cooked Rice and 🐰 Rabbit Face to bring awareness to sexual misconduct issues while circumventing censorship.

Similarly, advocates of LGBTQ equality find multiple ways to indicate their support through emojis including the 🌈 Rainbow and 🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag (usually specific to gay pride and rights), and the 🏳️‍⚧️ Transgender Flag to support transgender rights and issues.

These emojis are especially common during Pride Month celebrations, usually around June or the following months in many countries. 

Political Parties

Emojis can also communicate political party alignment irrespective of specific candidates. For example, the Democratic Socialists of America have adopted the 🌹 Rose as their emblematic emoji, citing the symbolism of roses as anti-authoritarian and the flower’s red hue for its associations with socialism. The same emoji is commonly adopted by other left-wing and center-left parties around the world for similar reasons.

As mentioned above in the context of the U.S. election, the two main American political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are typically associated with the colors blue and red, respectively.

To express support for Republicans, whether at election time or just generally, people have often opted for the above-discussed ❤️ Red Heart, 🔴 Red Circle, and 🟥 Red Square or the 🐘 Elephant, the party’s animal symbol.

For the Democrats, the 💙 Blue Heart, the 🔵 Blue Circle, or the 🟦 Blue Square, or the 🫏 Donkey, the animal representing the party, can be common emoji party affiliation indicators. Around presidential and especially midterm election times, many Democrats also use the 🌊 Water Wave to convey their hopes for a “blue wave” echoing the 2018 electoral victories that significantly wiped out Republican opponents. 

(Note that it’s much more common around the world for red to be linked to left-wing politics and blue with right-wing parties - for example, in Germany the 💙 Blue Heart has associations with the AfD party.)

🇸🇾 Flag Emojis

There are few stronger ways to signal political affiliation as it relates to national identity than with a flag emoji.

That’s not to say that all flags are political, of course; a flag emoji used on social media or in any written text can simply indicate one’s country of citizenship or national origin, drum up excitement for an upcoming international getaway or vacation, or celebrate a historical event tied to a given country. But for those looking to indicate that their relationship to a given nation has political undertones (or even more overt overtones), flags can be go-to emoji options.

National Flags

As mentioned above, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the 🇺🇦 Flag: Ukraine has seen a surge in usage on social media and the internet at large to express support for the country. On the flip side, a 🇷🇺 Flag: Russia in someone’s bio or username may convey support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, or it might just indicate that a given user is from Russia, for example. Context is important in determining a given user’s intentions. 

As mentioned above, the 🇺🇸 Flag: United States is a great example of a flag emoji that can carry nuanced political meaning depending on the use case. While Republicans can use it to represent their party's political agenda, it by no means represents those policies exclusively—the context here, too, has to be used to understand the intended usage

It’s also important to remember that not all flag emojis accurately represent geopolitical reality and the current state of the world.

For example, the December 2024 toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria ushered in a new Syrian political leadership, and backers of the new Syrian National Coalition government have proposed a new three-star flag to replace that of the former Syrian Arab Republic under al-Assad, whose two-star flag is still the official one currently available within the emoji keyboard.

Depending on how quickly the international community accepts the proposed flag change, the change in the Syrian flag emoji could follow suit, though the timeline is unclear. Learn more about the questions surrounding changing the Syrian flag emoji here.

Flag Alternatives: Hearts And More

Unicode rules currently dictate that only countries and autonomous geographical regions officially assigned two-letter region codes by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will have automatically approved emoji flags.

This ISO-based process is still active despite Unicode no longer accepting proposals for any new flag emojis, which is why the 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark was included within 2024's Emoji 16.0 recommendations.

This leaves less defined regions and stateless people such as the Kurds, who have significant populations in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey but no internationally recognized nation with political borders of their own, without a Unicode-recommended national flag emoji sequence to represent them. 

In cases like this, populations have gotten creative with how they represent their national heritage and identity online.

Some users have proposed a canonical sequence for a Kurdish flag emoji to Unicode (before Unicode’s blanket new flag proposal ban) of the ❤️ Red Heart followed by the ☀️ Sun and then the 💚 Green Heart to draw on the flag’s red, white, and green stripes overlaid with a sun, a sequence that has seen somewhat widespread adoption across social media.

Similarly, social media users across the African continent have been known to combine the ❤️ Red Heart, 🖤 Black Heart, and 💚 Green Heart to reference the Pan-African flag.

There are also examples of combining hearts to reference identity-based flags, with the 🩷 Pink Heart💜 Purple Heart, and 💙 Blue Heart emojis sometimes combined to reference the Bisexual flag, which has no representation in the emoji keyboard.

Decisions about which regions get a designated flag emoji and which don’t can often provoke a backlash from people who view those decisions as political, citing the fact that United Kingdom subdivisions such as England (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Flag: England), Scotland (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Flag: Scotland), and (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Flag: Wales), for example, have had flag emojis officially approved by Unicode since 2017.

Additionally, other non-countries including Antarctica (🇦🇶 Flag: Antarctica), the disputed territory Western Sahara (🇪🇭 Flag: Western Sahara), the Chinese administrative regions Hong Kong (🇭🇰 Flag: Hong Kong) and Macau (🇲🇴 Flag: Macau), and the Faroe Islands (🇫🇴 Flag: Faroe Islands), a division of Denmark, all have their own flag emojis.

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Where & Why Emojis Become Political

In a world where major events such as conflicts and wars, activist movements, elections, and revolutions can change the course of history in a flash, emojis allow people across the globe to indicate where they stand on a given issue, offering a quick medium to signal their political leanings or affiliations in a visible, easily recognizable way.

The emojis in the examples given above can appear minimally or all over a given person’s presence on the web—in the usernames, display names, and bios of users on social media platforms from X (formerly Twitter) to TikTok, Instagram, and beyond. They convey their views and values to other users with a glance or profile page visit.

Emojis can clearly possess heavy significance, from supporting embattled nations to signaling allegiances during elections to championing long-term social movements.

The popularity of different emojis can ebb and flow with global events. At the same time, their meanings can vary contextually and lead them to be repurposed to represent different political expressions and affiliations.

Such use is a testament to our desire for quick, recognizable ways to communicate who we are, what we value, and how we stand in solidarity with one another.