At the beginning of the new year in 216, the event of "Diba going out to war" became a controversial, thought-provoking and complex network event. What deserves attention is the extensive use of online "emoticons" throughout the incident, which even became the most important and significant communication content. From the perspective of communication, network emoticons are exerting a subtle influence on the visual culture, group identification identity and the renewal of discourse system of the Internet in China. On January 2th, 216, under the slogan "No grass grows when the emperor goes to war", mainland netizens entered Facebook, a social media in Taiwan Province, and wrote a lot of graphic comments against "Taiwan independence" under the messages of some public accounts, which caused widespread concern. In this process, the widespread use of online emoticons (hereinafter referred to as "emoticons") has become the most remarkable feature. Internet expressions have experienced the evolution from ASCII symbols, facial expressions, Emoji expressions, magic expressions, dynamic expressions to expression packages. The expression pack is different from other expressions in the form of content, and its images are mostly filled with words by video clips, screenshots of real people or hot events, similar to the common "design lines" in entertainment reports, expressing a mocking or self-deprecating tone and a relatively mild attitude. Words need to match the expression of images, such as eye-catching characters in popular TV dramas and pop singers with strong live expression, which often become the same protagonist in a series of emoticons. Therefore, emoticons are mostly "complete sets", so these expressions are collectively referred to as "emoticons" here. From the perspective of communication, we can find that emoticons are exerting a subtle influence on the visual culture, group identity and communication, and the renewal of discourse system of the Internet in China.

strengthening the network visual culture according to the symbolic interaction theory, the communication and interaction between people is caused by "symbols" and their meanings, while the chat symbol is essentially to abstract or visualize the expressions, actions, demeanor and other behaviors spread by human beings in reality into a picture to assist the vivid "expressions" that can't be expressed by pure words. The pursuit of "language art" in early online communication is the embodiment of literary texts on the Internet, but now it has given way to "interface texts" that emphasize both pictures and texts, which is the origin of the popularity of expression packs. For example, Chen Yuan pointed out in Sociolinguistics: "In a special situation of modern social life, we can't use or be satisfied with using language (spoken language or written language) as a communication tool, and often turn to various symbols that can directly impress (stimulate) people's sensory organs to replace language, so as to be more direct, effective and respond more quickly." Reflected in the expression pack, the image with pictures is often straightforward or exaggerated. Because of this, Fu Erkang and pop singer Z.TAO in Princess Pearl, which has large body movements and rich expressions in the performance, will be favored. As the spread of symbols, the role of emoticons is reflected in the following aspects. First, the visual representation function. When the sender and the receiver perceive the meaning of the image, they rely on the reflection of the visual picture. In the process of encoding and decoding, the two sides have reached a * * * understanding of the interpretation of the world, which also belongs to the construction of the dialogue context. Second, the function of visual rhetoric. In the process of communication, the communicator transforms the visual image in life into language symbols, appeals to the communicative object, and then restores it to the psychological visual image through psychology. The third is the function of recreation and pleasure. Expressions can express the joy of the communicator and also adjust the communication atmosphere. However, emoticons also have strong national or regional characteristics, that is, the "geographical differences" of language symbols expressed by Saussure. Although the expressions are universal, due to the influence of the communication situation, different recipients will have different understandings of the pictures. For example, in the "Emperor's Battle", many Facebook users in Taiwan Province will ask their mainland netizens what these pictures mean. This difference exists because "signifier" and "signified" in emoticons are not simply stored in images and do not have a high degree of conformity, and words are also an important space for spreading symbols, while the traditional "expression" based on pictures is trans-regional, because it is only necessary to mobilize vision, and to understand the connotation of emoticons requires to mobilize thinking and reason. The condition of symbolic meaning exchange is that both sides have the same meaning space and grammatical norms. This incident also means that the meaning space supporting the expression pack is expanding, which once again promotes the process of network culture migrating to visual culture.