Hashtags are more important than many
people realize. In the midst of all the cacophony of noise that happens on social media, sometimes we dismiss hashtags. But we
show in the book that, in fact, hashtags are a very, very important tool for
connecting many people from many different backgrounds across issues that
they are invested in debate about. Hashtags work as a form of logistic
shorthand for activists' arguments for social movement. Folks can go online,
attach the pound sign to a short wor
d or phrase, and they have a political argument
right there that can be picked up. It can become a slogan; it can be
taken into the street; it can be written on those signs; and it really then can
have influence in larger public debates of politics. In 2014, we were inspired to write
this book by a really interesting incident that happened where the New
York City Police Department asked its followers on Twitter to share stories
and images with the NYPD using the hashtag #myNYPD. Of course, this
was
before Ferguson, and before the last many years of hashtag activism had happened,
and they really didn't know what was about to happen. So my co-authors and I watched as activists and ordinary people, from not
only all over the United States but all over the world, began to share images and
stories of police brutality with that hashtag. Eventually, we wrote a piece
titled "Hijacking #myNYPD" that was all about how ordinary people had taken this
hashtag — started by those in power — and used
it to tell a story not often told about those
who experience violence at their hands. We looked at hashtags like #yesallwomen, like #girlslikeus, like #justiceforTrayvon, and many more. And we think about the way that hashtags have evolved over time to really have
important influence in our country. And this includes influencing presidential
candidates, for example, who've begun to use hashtags and respond to hashtags. There's two things that we hope people really are able to take from the book.
And one is just the fact that ordinary people have really been able to use a
technology — that wasn't necessarily made for them — in innovative and important
ways to build communities and change the world around them. The other is we hope
to inform theory and scholarship about technology, the public sphere, and social
change, and offer some considerations into how to think about those ideas more holistically.
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