The look of “Aww”: Emotional transcoding in GIF repositories on digital media platforms

While GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) have been studied as digital communication tools, their repositories – these databases of visual expressions – remain largely unexamined as sites that generate emotional expressions across different modes of communication. This research introduces the concept of “emotional transcoding,” examining how it operates in major repositories Giphy and Tenor through the conversion of paralinguistic vocal expressions – auditory reactions like “aww,” “duh,” and “wow” – into visual representations within silent GIF formats. Through multimodal analysis, this study documents the semiotic strategies involved in emotional transcoding, revealing systematic patterns for visually encoding auditory emotional expressions. Using qualitative content analysis of 1000 GIFs, this study identifies the visual techniques used in cross-modal conversion and analyzes the demographic patterns among performers who represent these expressions. The findings reveal how emotional transcoding operates through specific representational conventions and highlight questions about whose bodies become available as vehicles for emotional communication in digital platforms.