Brazil India Italy Mexico U.S.

The GIF — just long enough to convey a single emotional gesture, and simple enough to cross linguistic and cultural barriers — has marched to the frontline of online expression around the world. And GIPHY, the first and largest GIF search engine, has become an international clearinghouse for the form since its 2013 launch. It’s a site where GIFs are created and uploaded and then catalogued by emotion, demographics and cultural reference points. Using data provided by GIPHY, we’ve been able to identify how people in Brazil, India, Italy, Mexico and the United States express seven basic feelings through GIFs.

Blinking White Guy Crying Jordan

But what we’re most interested in is where global GIF culture diverges, and where local vernaculars emerge. We found that by looking at the relative popularity of each GIF by country. The resulting matrix shows us the most American way to express happiness; the most Italian way to show love; the most Indian way to say you’re sad.

As we survey GIF usage around the world, what pops out is how people from different countries draw on a globalized media ecosystem to express themselves online. Minions, the nonverbal sidekicks from the animated blockbuster “Despicable Me,” were created by Hollywood to appeal to moviegoers worldwide. Now they’ve seamlessly worked themselves into the online culture, too — they’ve become a top avatar for Italian GIF users to express humor, and for Mexican users to express excitement.

Minions

There’s also plenty of cultural drift on display. The GIF’s transcendence of language means it skips easily over national barriers. One of Mexico’s favorite ways to express anger is from a viral 2010 commercial by an Egyptian dairy company called Panda Cheese that features a panda wreaking havoc on an office. Another popular GIF in Mexico was captured during the N.B.A. playoffs, when fans of the Golden State Warriors celebrated in the stands.

Panda Cheese ad Golden State Warriors fans

Meanwhile, a moment from the now-departed sitcom “Parks and Recreation” has gained traction in Italy, and an image spliced from the Japanese manga series Sailor Moon has caught on in Brazil.

Aziz Ansari in “Parks and Recreation” Sailor Moon

The results also speak to the complexities of cultural appropriation. Mexican GIF users have taken the Hollywood version of their national icon, Frida Kahlo, and recast it as a culturally specific way to express sadness. And Italian users have adopted Wario, the villain of Super Mario Bros., as a conduit for their anger. So a game about cartoon Italian people created by the Japanese designer Shigeru Miyamoto has become an emotional outlet for actual Italian people.

Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo Wario, the villain from Super Mario Bros.

There are canny cultural adaptations at work, too, like the popular Mexican love GIF that takes a clip of Hercules (as depicted by Disney) presenting a white flower to his love interest, Megara, and replaces it with a cob of Mexican street corn.

A scene from “Hercules” ... … remixed with a cob of elote

Some of these GIFs come from unrecognizable sources (none that we recognize, at least — let us know if you know of their origins). They’re cut from amateur videos that are quickly converted into the texture of the web, living on as popular GIFs without otherwise elevating their subjects to internet fame.

A laughing duck A sad girl

Other GIFs are the product of GIPHY itself, with an eye toward creating new images that seem primed to catch on online. We’re now seeing the rise of GIF-native stars — actors and GIPHY staffers enlisted to enact emotional expressions — as well as GIF artists recruited to draw original emotional loops into existence. Internet-savvy companies are capitalizing on the medium, too, turning GIFs into micro-ads that percolate around the web. Like the branded GIF from Papa John’s Pizza, which has become a top expression of excitement in the United States.

A GIF produced by GIPHY for Women’s History Month A branded GIF from Papa John’s

The subjects of GIFs tend to gravitate toward cultural extremes. In India, that means the satirical spectacles produced by the YouTube comedy group All India Bakchod, or AIB — “Bakchod” is Hindi slang for “senseless talk.” Many of the country’s most popular GIFs are spliced from its skits.

Bollywood star Alia Bhatt A GIF from the Youtube comedy group AIB

Italian GIF users mine the drama of the soccer field, elevating this image of the Italy players Graziano Pelle and Gianluigi Buffon celebrating into a top Italian expression of love.

Italian soccer players embrace

And in Brazil, the GIFiest celebrity is Gretchen, a ubiquitous fixture of the country’s pop culture who has variously been a pop star, a porn star, a mayoral candidate and a reality TV fixture. As a singer in the ’70s, she was hailed as “the butt queen,” and 40 years later she has claimed the title of “meme queen of the Brazilian internet.”

A GIF from a vintage video of Gretchen Gretchen, more recently

Gretchen has recently enjoyed a brush with international internet fame. In March, Nicki Minaj tweeted of her, “Man can someone tell me WHO this lady is?!?!! This lady been in EVERY other GIF for like the last 6 months.” Gabriela Lunardi, a Brazilian meme researcher, puts Gretchen in the context of Brazilian internet culture writ large, writing that promoting a figure like Gretchen to the outside world is a means of both “recognizing ourselves as a nation” while “criticising our problems through humour.” Gretchen is simultaneously a source of pride and a laughingstock.

That ambivalence is baked into the GIF’s culture-defining power. The local icons selected for heavy GIFing can reflect points of national identification, but they can also reveal troubling truths about national attitudes about gender in race. Women are often smeared as over-emotional wine-guzzlers, and black people pigeonholed as perpetual performers whose emotions are always cranked to 11.

In America especially — but elsewhere, too — women of color are called on disproportionately to express extreme emotions on behalf of GIF users: A hyper, sped-up clip of Oprah caught in a “AND YOU GET A CAR!” moment is a top American happy GIF, while a reaction shot of Tanisha Thomas crying on the American reality show “Bad Girls Club” has gained traction in Italy as a way to express sadness.

Oprah Tanisha Thomas in “Bad Girls Club”