Hashtag Activism

Overview

“Hashtag activism” refers to the use of social media to advance, support, debate about, or reflect on social causes. While the term is most commonly used in relation to “X” (formerly Twitter), it has also been applied to the general act of activism on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and has been used as part of a diverse number of global activist projects. In some cases, the use of hashtag activism is very limited, while in others, such as #BringBackOurGirls, it has been used to draw international attention to a local problem with global ramifications.

Hashtag activism is unique in that it brings together so many different supporters, often from communities that would not otherwise have come into contact. Through hashtag activism, a movement can gain international support within moments or secure the support of celebrities that activists would not otherwise have been able to reach. In 2017, Tombleson and Wolf wrote that large campaigns that support broad issues can gather supporters from around the world using hashtag activism. This has the potential to quickly grow a movement, and activists need to be prepared to respond just as quickly to maximize their growth.

Some of the earliest academic studies of hashtag use by activists focused on the use of “X” during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. At that time, activists were using social media to coordinate their next activities, find supporters, and evade the police. In 2012, Deluca, Lawson, and Sun wrote that this was a defining moment when activists shifted from traditional media to new media to organize and advertise their activities. The researchers argue that this shift to social media, including the use of hashtag activism, encouraged new contexts in which activism could occur and created a new expectation for how activists and socially minded citizens could and should participate in social causes and public debate. Occupy Wall Street also identified ways social media platforms could be used to change the concept of collective identity and the role of an advocacy organization. The protests, which began in New York but quickly spread across America and internationally, demonstrated a new way for activists to organize and work together to both define and advance a social movement. Even after the Occupy Wall Street protests ended, the activists who had participated via social media remained connected and continued to support a diversity of causes.

Other, earlier studies focus on the use of hashtags by activists during the 2010 Arab Spring. Sometimes referred to as the “revolutions that were tweeted,” the use of “X” and hashtag activism has been widely studied both by scholars who wish to understand how the revolutions began and were spread, and by those who wish to be ready for the next waves of revolutions. In 2011, Wilson and Dunn used a dataset of social media posts from the Egyptian revolution to examine how protesters used hashtags such as #25jan to organize and draw attention to the revolution. This use of a hashtag by activists might not be considered "hashtag activism" by scholars because the hashtag itself was not the act of activism. Instead, the hashtag was used to identify activists and coordinate activities occurring elsewhere.

What makes hashtag activism stand out is that posting with the hashtag is the act of activism. For example, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign was designed to put pressure on the Nigerian government to find and return the more than two hundred schoolgirls who had been kidnapped by the militant group Boko Haram. During this campaign, many celebrities and average citizens posted images of themselves holding a piece of paper with #BringBackOurGirls written on it. The first recorded tweet using this hashtag was by former First Lady Michelle Obama. Soon, more than two million retweets had been posted. Many of those tweeters lacked Obama's political capital. They could not travel to Nigeria to look for the girls, and they might not have attended a protest or rally or sent letters to the Nigerian embassy. Instead, through the use of hashtag activism, they were able to show their support for the kidnapped girls and their families and demand that the Nigerian government devote more resources to ensure their return. In 2017, eighty-two of the girls were released after negotiations with Boko Haram. Although several more girls were later found, by 2024, more than eighty were still missing.

Among the most famous instances of hashtag activism are the American #BlackLivesMatter, Canadian #IdleNoMore, Hong Kong #UmbrellaRevolution, and the international #MeToo. Each of these projects is similar in that the hashtag is used to press for social change and awareness, but they differ in the communities and actions they aimed to address. They are also different in how they began. #BlackLivesMatter called attention to police brutality and racism against African Americans. This hashtag was first used when George Zimmerman was acquitted during his trial for killing Trayvon Martin, a teenager who had been walking through his neighborhood. The hashtag has since been revived several times to mark and respond to the killing of other Black people, such as Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Missouri, and Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in New York City. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag is not always used alone. For example, after Michael Brown's death, it was common for tweeters to use both #BlackLivesMatter and #Ferguson (the city in which Brown lived) in their tweets. In 2016, Yang wrote that collecting these tweets produces a community narrative that helps us better understand activism that occurred after each instance. Similarly, in 2016, Cumberbatch and Trujillo-Pagán wrote that instances of hashtag activism, such as #BlackLivesMatter, are useful ways to question and combat derogatory narratives about minority communities. They argue that the instantaneous nature of hashtag posting and distribution, as well as the ability to reach a broad range of supporters, means that hashtag activism can change and expand the notion of what it means to participate in a protest or support a social cause. Put another way, hashtag activism is exceptionally fast, and because of its speed, it allows movements to grow much more quickly than older social movements or protests.

While some instances of hashtag activism are positively oriented, meaning they support an individual or group, others are negatively oriented, drawing attention to the misdeeds of an individual or group. For example, the campaign #PaulasBestDishes was a parody of Paula Deen, a celebrity cook. This parody was used in part to encourage the firing of Paula Deen after she made derogatory comments about African Americans. Many of the tweets that were posted parodied popular Southern foods with new names that addressed racism. In 2015, Vats wrote that #PaulasBestDishes became a way to examine and reject Paula Deen specifically and racism generally. Focusing on food and the rhetoric of food, this hashtag was able to launch new discussions regarding the ways that African American experiences, classism, and racism are discussed in contemporary society and media. In the short term, the hashtag #PaulasBestDishes has been attributed to Paula Deen’s firing. In the long term, this hashtag has also been credited with bringing together a new community that can debate about social issues and press for more inclusive and responsible representations on television programs and mass media in general.

Further Insights

Instances of hashtag activism have created a new and interesting pool of research for academics. Oftentimes, it is difficult for a researcher to be in the exact right place at the exact right moment to experience and document a protest or revolution. However, hashtag activism allows researchers to be present at the beginning of a movement, track the movement from their offices, and reflect on the event over a long period of time. Because the archive of tweets and posts is searchable, researchers can go back and find the earliest instance of hashtag activism on a new topic, even if they missed the first posting. This availability is important for scholars who want to research new topics. It is also critical for the development of research that addresses a range of activities and social groups. Hashtag activism has encouraged many people, including those who are economically or socially disadvantaged, to participate in social justice campaigns. As they do so, and as their activities are documented and recorded through social media, they expand the diversity of subjects academics can study.

Issues

While scholars are interested in how hashtag activism brings together communities, they are concerned about what happens after the hashtag is posted. Some scholars argue that hashtag activism supports social causes by raising awareness and broadening support for a particular cause. Other scholars, however, argue that hashtag activism allows individuals to feel as though they have made a meaningful contribution to society while actually doing very little. These scholars refer to instances of online activism, such as hashtag activism, as “slacktivism.” Researchers, such as Kwak et al. in 2018, have attempted to test this idea of slacktivism by tracking the ways that individuals used social media during the 2016 presidential election and how that participation correlates with offline political participation at events such as marches, protests, and voting. Through this study, Kwak et al.'s team has shown that online participation is correlated with offline participation.

In 2017, Duarte and Vigil-Hayes studied the ways that hashtag activism occurred and was used during the 2016 presidential election. They followed the use of thirty-three Native American activists and examined the ways in which they used X to advance social issues and comment on political campaigns. Their analysis accounted for both the issues with which these activists were concerned and the limitations that the activists face, such as slow internet bandwidth on Native American reservations. These researchers found that the hashtag #indigenous has been used to collectivize a wide array of social causes and experiences that affect Native American communities. In addition to supporting a specific cause or way of life, Duarte and Vigil-Hayes also argue that collectivizing activists through “X” is a way to decolonize—or to break the controls of—the national government, which regulates the activities of Native Americans. In this way, hashtag activism, through #indigenous, has been used to support a general movement rather than a specific act of injustice. In the future, communications scholars researching indigenous issues will be able to search for #indigenous and find the many ways that activists have used this hashtag to label and promote their activities. This is a new form of organizing diverse protests and organizations and may open up new research projects for communication scholars who wish to understand cross-cultural communication networks and practices.

While the hashtag #indigenous addresses a plethora of topics, some hashtags are very specific. For example, some scholars have studied how specific hashtags are linked to traditional forms of activism and protest. For example, there are many studies of the ways that athletes display political symbols or salutes during their games. During a 2014 St. Louis Rams game, five athletes made the "hands up" gesture, which was associated with the death of Michael Brown and associated with #BlackLivesMatter. These athletes were responding to and participating in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In the athletes' gesture, there was a connection between a national event, an instance of hashtag activism, and an in-person gesture of support on a national stage. This was interesting to scholars who wanted to understand how these many different types of media are gathered into a large, complex movement. However, for some viewers of this 2014 football game, the players' gesture was offensive and led to a new instance of hashtag activism, #BoycottRams. This hashtag was used by former fans of the Rams—a franchise that moved to Los Angeles in 2016—who did not attend games or buy team merchandise as a protest against the political activism of the Rams players. As Sanderson, Frederick, and Stocz's 2016 study indicated, instances such as the #BoycottRams campaign demonstrate the complexity of hashtag activism, the ways that in-person and online activism are connected, and how one instance of activism can spark another. The #BoycottRams event also demonstrated a moment when two instances of hashtag activism, #BoycottRams and #BlackLivesMatter, came into conflict with one another.

Another example is the #StopTheSteal hashtag, which emerged in late 2020 as an online movement that falsely claimed the US presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was rigged. It spread rapidly across social media, amplifying misinformation and helping supporters connect, organize, and mobilize through posts, videos, and calls to action. As concerns grew that the hashtag was promoting false claims and could encourage real-world harm, major platforms restricted or removed #StopTheSteal content. Scholars and investigators later identified direct links between the online #StopTheSteal movement and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, showing that the hashtag and its networks played a key role in radicalizing participants and coordinating protests that escalated into violence.

Communications scholars have traditionally studied what happens when in-person political movements clash in a street, stadium, or parade. This new form of clash, which can occur entirely online, has created new ways for scholars to think about activism, interaction between opposing groups, and the ways that social media platforms are changing communicative norms.

Bibliography

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