Russian citizens are using emoji codes to avoid authorities and organise protests
The sunflower emoji and the walking man emoji have both become symbols of a free Ukraine
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Your support makes all the difference.Russians are using emojis to organize protests in order to avoid censorship.
In February, as Russia invaded Ukraine, a picture of the Russian poet Pushkin accompanied by the number seven and rows of people walking was shared on social media.
The BBC reports that these emojis were a reference that was well-known to authorities, but was still used to spread the word around Russian people to attend demonstrations.
Russians will use phrases like “Let’s go for a walk to the centre” or “The weather is great for a walk” to let others know they will attend a protest, with one describing the evasion of government censors like an inside joke or a meme.
Almost 14,000 people have been detained across Russia since the invasion began, and arrests have reportedly increased since the new law was introduced.
The Russian government is attentive to what people post on social media. One woman reported that, in a court hearing a screenshot of a tweet she had shared about a protest had been taken almost immediately after she had posted it.
Many people in Russia have deleted their social media profiles on sites like Instagram altogether.
The walking emoji is not the only one that has found new connotations from the invasion. The sunflower emoji has been added by users to their social media profiles as a “global symbol of resistance, unity and hope”, the Washington Post reports.
The sunflower (or “soniashnyk”) is Ukraine’s national flower, grown in the country since the middle of the 18th century and cultivated for its seeds. More recently, its use as an emoji stems from a video that went viral of a Ukrainian woman telling Russian soldiers to “take these seeds so sunflowers grow here when you die”.
The symbol has now been worn by US first lady Jill Biden and other senators.
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