The emergence of generative AI tools poses both benefits and ethical dilemmas for English as a Second Language (ESL) students in their language acquisition journey. This project seeks to explore the ways in which the use of generative AI tools affects ESL students’ self-perception as writers.

As online platforms become an integral part of our lives, it is important to understand how people utilize them to meet their needs. Using a cross-cultural approach, we examine the needs of Western and non-Western users when seeking information on social content online platforms, and how these differences in needs motivate different user preferences for features. 

Many prior studies have compared the use of emojis by people from various cultural backgrounds, but little has been known about bilingual or multilingual individuals. In this project, we aim to ask the following question: do bilingual individuals interpret and use emojis differently when texting in different linguistic contexts?