Hashtag Activism Research Articles

Pitching Gender in a Racist Tune: The Affective Publics of the #120decibel Campaign

This article analyses the changed structures, actors and modes of communication that characterise ‘dissonant public spheres.’ With the #120decibel campaign by the German Identitarian Movement in 2018, gender and migration were pitched in a racist tune, absorbing feminist concerns and positions into neo-nationalistic, misogynist and xenophobic propaganda. The article examines the case of #120decibel as an instance of ‘affective publics’ (Lünenborg, 2019a) where forms of feminist protest and emancipatory hashtag activism are absorbed by anti-migration campaigners. Employing the infrastructure and network logics of social media platforms, the campaign gained public exposure and sought political legitimacy through strategies of dissonance, in which a racial solidarity against the liberal state order was formed. Parallel structures of networking and echo-chamber amplification were established, where right-wing media articulate fringe positions in an attempt to protect the rights of white women to be safe in public spaces. #120decibel is analysed and discussed here as characteristic of the ambivalent role and dynamics of affective publics in societies challenged by an increasing number of actors forming an alliance on anti-migration issues based on questionable feminist positions.

Hashtag activism and connective action: A case study of #HongKongPoliceBrutality

This study applies the connective action framework and network analysis to analyze how counterpublics used social media to form cliques and mobilize support toward a local issue at the global stage. It presents a case study of the 2019 Hong Kong protest to uncover under what conditions hashtag activism can evolve into connective action. The network approach allows us to examine users and content simultaneously to identify three mechanisms underlying the movement: generative role-taking, hashtag based storytelling, and issue alignment through diverse social groups. Combining descriptive network analysis, modularity analysis, and topic modeling, we demonstrated that hashtag activists during the Hong Kong 2019 protests used different strategies of connective action to engage in information sharing and drive the emergence of connective action. (122 words)

Hashtag activism and message frames: social network analysis of Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in Indonesia

During the Coronavirus pandemic, social media played an essential role in disseminating information online by utilizing various message frames and hashtags. Instagram is a popular social media worldwide that are used to spread various information. This study applied the social network analysis (SNA) approach as a theoretical framework and explored how the relationship between users on the Instagram platform related to Coronavirus outbreaks. Moreover, we also investigate how the relationship between users and their hashtags. SNA techniques were used for visualizing network models using an undirected graph, measuring network attributes, and centrality measures to find the most influential users in the network. A total of 10,403 posts based on #wabahcorona on Instagram from February 28, 2020, to May 18, 2020, were analyzed. Based on the analysis results, hashtags play an important role in this topic. Degree centrality measure as connectivity number shows that only two user accounts can make it into the list’s top ten. When using the Eigenvector centrality measure, there are no users in the top ten. The modularity measure detects 122 distinct communities that show the dense connection of nodes in the networks. Betweenness centrality measure shows that there are six related hashtags to COVID-19 pandemic out of ten hashtags. They are #wabahcorona, #covid19, #corona, #viruscorona, #dirumahaja, and #coronavirus and the four are Islamic related hashtags. The Islamic related hashtags are caused by the date of Ramadhan month.

Hashtag activism: social media and the #FreeYouth protests in Thailand

ABSTRACT The Thai 2020 anti-government protests were the first large-scale pro-democracy protests in Thailand mediated on Twitter. How has Twitter been used by anti-government supporters and to what effect? This article examines the use of hashtags by activists during the early stages of the Thai 2020 anti-government protests. Using an original dataset of 27,233 Twitter data points drawn from the #FreeYouth (FYM; #เยาวชนปลดแอก) campaign, the article argues that Twitter was used primarily to build collective narratives and disseminate movement information, rather than to mobilize offline protest activities. The key topic conversations within the Free Youth networks focus on discontent towards the government and demands for democracy, suggesting that Twitter was central to mobilizing pro-democracy collective action frames. The article further argues that the Free Youth networks on Twitter were loosely connected through community clusters of weak ties, not tight crowds. The challenge for FYM activists going forward is to support ties across its online networks that will strengthen over time, or risk becoming an ephemeral network of convenience that can only be mobilized on an ad hoc basis.

THE BENEFITS OF TEACHING #METOO IN THE CONTEXT OF WOMEN’S LIBERATION HISTORY

This essay acknowledges the importance of examining the #metoo movement in global, cross-cultural, international contexts as scholars. Yet it also argues for teaching the social media (SM) movement in a grounded historical context as growing out of other moments of women’s liberation movement history in which women came together to tell their story, sharing their personal experiences that led to political action, particularly when teaching the hashtag movement in introductory women and gender studies courses. The author shares her efforts to do so online at a south-eastern technical university in the United States in the Spring of 2019. Not as part of evaluations but as part of a teaching unit within the course, she asked her nearly 50 students, both male and female, to compare and contrast the SM movement to consciousness-raising groups in which women had met face-to-face to share their experiences in an earlier time in movement history. All 300 student posts and reflections posted in the week under examination were scrutinized by the instructor, and their thoughts and conclusions analyzed. In this article, a sample of four is explored.

I Refused to Say #MeToo: Negotiating Between Individual Agency and ‘Imagined’ Platform Constraints

This article describes how ‘imagined’ constraints of the social media platform by its users stand crucial while actualising platform affordances and exercising individual agency. I use the term ‘imagined constraints’ to explain how constraints of the media platform are speculated by my participants while they negotiate between the materiality of the platform and social environment to formulate their restricted agency. Here, I use a recent example of feminist hashtag movement ‘#MeToo’ as a case in point. Previous literature addressing feminist hashtag activism and other social movements influenced by social media platforms mainly discuss the participatory potential of these platforms. However, empirical investigation into the factors leading to non-participation in movements like #MeToo has hardly captured any scholarly attention. To address this existing gap in the literature, this article analyses embodied experiences shared through in-depth interviews by 11 Indian women who made a conscious decision of not participating in the #MeToo movement. I discuss my results taking into consideration theories of ‘imagined platform affordances’ and shaping of individual agency in terms of activist participation. I discuss that ‘Imagined constraints’ of the social media platform are chiefly shaped by an individual’s analysis of their sociocultural environment in which media platforms exist. These imagined constraints of a platform lead to constitute a ‘constrained agency’ of an individual. I argue that, while we theorise the potential of social media platforms in facilitating hashtag feminist movements like #MeToo, we must take into consideration the formulation of ‘imagined constraints of the platform’ by its users, as it stands crucial in guiding their participatory action.

“We’re a Part of This City, Too”: An Examination of the Politics of Representation of D.C. Native via #DCNativesDay

This cultural analysis explores how D.C. natives represented themselves on Twitter via #DCNativesDay. The analysis found that Twitter users engaged in hashtag activism to share stories about their connection to place(s) (e.g., movie theaters, neighborhoods, public schools) in the city that were integral in the construction of their individual and collective Black D.C. native identities. Constructed identities were not monolithic, and users engaged in some self-reflexivity. The users’ emphasis on place seemed to signify reclamation of changing city landscapes and legitimacy in the city. Ultimately, this research raises questions about how alternative representations that map marginalized communities onto city spaces in online spaces can create possibilities of transformation for Black communities during gentrification in offline spaces.

CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT: DIGITAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER; A CORPUS-BASED TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF TWEETS ON CAA

This article is an attempt to understand how digital activism was used to express dissent towards the CAA 2019 that proposed citizenship based on religious identity. The study analyses the trending tweets on CAA through the corpus method. The data analysis showed that how Twitter is used both by the citizens and political parties to promote their views. The majority of Twitterati expressed its discomfort towards the Act that was passed hurriedly by stressing heavily on its “unconstitutionality” & “non-secularity”. The pertinent questions of secularism, citizenship, immigration were found to be poorly dissipated and hateful hashtag movements ruled the discourse. The whole discourse was found to be extremely rigid over the issue of nationality and citizenship status of Muslims and NRC. The statistically significant scores of tests like collocate, N-grams, word clusters, and concordances too showed similar results with an inclination towards negative sentiments for the Act.

Hashtag Activism, Politics and Resistance in Africa: Examining #ThisFlag and #RhodesMustFall online movements

The article examines the impact of digital technologies as emerging platforms for social activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the African continent still lags behind in smartphone ownership and internet connectivity compared to other regions of the world, there is enough evidence to suggest that online-based movements have fundamentally transformed political engagement in Africa. This article uses the cases of hashtag activisms #ThisFlag (Zimbabwe) and #RhodesMustFall (South Africa), to demonstrate that social media has accentuated resistance in Africa. Particular attention is directed to the unique ways in which online-based movements have been used to enact resistance. The article provides critical insights into the centrality of context in the discussion of social media efficacy. State response and the promise of social media activism as foci for resistance is further outlined in the article.

Trauma, social media, and #WhyIDidntReport: An analysis of twitter posts about reluctance to report sexual assault.

Recent social trends regarding sexual violence and gender have included elements of "hashtag activism," which involves using social media tools for cultural awareness and change. For example, the Twitter hashtag: #WhyIDidntReport was created for survivors of sexual victimization to share their barriers to reporting. In this project, 600 tweets attached to this hashtag were analyzed using a combination of grounded theory and content analysis methods. Results were organized into a conceptual map, with a central category (power), connected to three other ecological categories (culture, community systems, and relationships) and one category of survivor experiences. Each category has subcategories which illustrate certain contextual and internal barriers to reporting assault. The model shows how these barriers intersect and interact, and often further traumatize those who have been assaulted. The model offers implications for professionals working with those who have survived sexual trauma, as well as those studying the dynamics of abuse.

The Politics and Symbolism of the #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe

In the context of the hashtag movement #ThisFlag, this paper examines the sensual affects drawn from flag symbolism and why the Zimbabwean flag is policed by the state. It uses the symbolism and politics of the hashtag movements by focusing on Evan Mawarire’s national lament and the Zimbabwean flag. It employs a literary and discursive analysis of Mawarire’s lament using desktop research on the contestations surrounding the flag. It shows that in dominant nationalist discourses, the flag is imaged as the land/nation and feminised to warrant it utmost respect, protection, sanctity and re/productive capacity. On the other hand, the #ThisFlag has made use of the flag to resist and subvert grand and naturalised dominant discourses of nationalism and citizenship to foster new imagi/nations of the nation. The use of the flag by the movement provoked ZANU-PF’s ownership of the national flag, which is quite similar to and has been drawn from the flag of the party, hence the movement was challenging the identity of the party, its ownership and its relevance. The paper shows the fluidity of symbols and symbolic meanings and why #ThisFlag had symbolic radical power and the possibilities of using the state’s and ZANU-PF’s cultural tools to challenge ZANU-PF’s hold on national knowledge and power. It contributes to our understanding of both state-power retention and how subaltern voices can uncover the agency of subjects within the very instruments of control incessantly used by dominant regimes.

#Antivaccination on Instagram: A Computational Analysis of Hashtag Activism through Photos and Public Responses

A dramatic increase has been registered in the number of social media posts in photo form as well as in hashtag activism. Hashtags, which manifest thoughts and feelings clearly and concisely, originated on Twitter, where the length of a post is limited; their use, however, has expanded into other social media services, including Instagram. Hashtags, which make it easy to find and express support for posts of interest, have been widely used for online activism, although they have been criticized for fostering confirmation bias. Moreover, hashtag activism in photo form has been relatively understudied. This research analyzed Instagram photos with antivaccination hashtags as an example of hashtag activism through photos. In addition, we examined how the photo features were related to public response, which was manifested via engagement and comment sentiment. The results suggest that the photos which were categorized into “text” took the largest share. It was also found that the major way of claiming was to imprint key messages that persuade people not to vaccinate with remarks from professionals on photos and provide a source of supporting information in the post text with hashtags of antivaccine intention. Various photo features showed associations with engagement and comment sentiment, but the directions of correlation were usually the opposite: these results suggest that engagement and comment sentiment are separate domains that reveal different public responses.

\u201cThese Women are Making a Statement Against Rape and yet the only Thing Y'All can Focus on is \u2018Eww They're Naked\u2019\u201d: Exploring Rape Culture on Facebook in South Africa

Sexual assault on campuses has been identified as a pervasive public health problem. In April 2016, students across South African universities launched the #Endrapeculture campaign to express their frustration against university policies which served to perpetuate a rape culture. The use of hashtag activism during the protest served to spark online public debates and mobilize support for the protests. This article describes the public reactions to the South African #Endrapeculture protests on the Facebook social media platform. Data was collected through natural observations of comment threads on news articles and public posts on the student protests, and subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest that the #nakedprotest was successful in initiating public conversations concerning the issue of rape culture. However, the reactions towards the #nakedprotest were divided with some perpetuating a mainstream public discourse which perpetuates rape culture, and others (re)presenting a counter-public that challenged current dominant views about rape culture. Two related main themes emerged: Victim-blaming and Trivialising Rape Culture. Victim-blaming narratives emerged from the commenters and suggested that the protesters were increasing their chances of being sexually assaulted by marching topless. This discourse seems to perpetuate the notion of the aggressive male sexual desire and places the onus on women to protect themselves. Other commenters criticised the #nakedprotest method through demeaning comments which served to derail the conversation and trivialise the message behind the protest. The public reaction to the #nakedprotest demonstrated that rape culture is pervasive in society and continues to be re(produced) through discourse on social media platforms. However, social media also offers individuals the opportunity to draw from and participate in multiple counter-publics which challenge these mainstream rape culture discourses.

False equivalencies: Online activism from left to right.

Digital media are critical for contemporary activism-even low-effort "clicktivism" is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through "hashtag activism" and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics.

Bubble storytelling with automated animation: a Brexit hashtag activism case study.

Hashtag data are common and easy to acquire. Thus, they are widely used in studies and visual data storytelling. For example, a recent story by China Central Television Europe depicts Brexit as a hashtag movement displayed on an animated bubble chart. However, creating such a story is usually laborious and tedious, because narrators have to switch between different tools and discuss with different collaborators. To reduce the burden, we develop a prototype system to help explore the bubbles’ movement by automatically inserting animations connected to the storytelling of the video creators and the interaction of viewers to those videos. We demonstrate the usability of our method through both use cases and a semi-structured user study.Graphic abstract

Of wine and whiteboards: Enacting feminist reflexivity in collaborative research

Reflexivity is considered a hallmark of qualitative research. With the continued growth in team-based research, more attention is needed to what it means to practice reflexivity within the context of these research collaborations. In this article, we draw upon scholarship on reflexivity and our own experiences to develop what we term ‘collaborative feminist reflexivity’ (CFR). CFR represents a form of reflexivity that is distinctly collaborative in how it is enacted, grounded in feminist epistemological and ethical commitments, holistically engaged throughout the research process, and multifaceted, involving multiple formal and informal practices. In critically analyzing our own reflexive practices in the context of an interdisciplinary, multi-method study on hashtag activism related to domestic violence, we seek to identify specific practices for research teams as well as interrogate the potentials and limitations of these practices for enacting feminist reflexivity.

DISCURSO DE ÓDIO EM MÍDIAS SOCIAIS COMO ESTRATÉGIA DE PERSUASÃO POPULAR

RESUMO Este artigo busca compreender o momento atual, dando um passo atrás, para mostrar que em uma situação anterior à campanha eleitoral de 2018, já havia indícios do populismo digital (CESARINO, 2018): o aparato digital e a mobilização (produção e compartilhamentos de hashtags no Twitter), bem como a tática política de estabelecer um eixo sintagmático amigo-inimigo. Mais especificamente, o intuito aqui é analisar discussões políticas, dentro do quadro linchamento virtual (MACEDO, 2018), de duas maneiras: (i) por suas conexões, utilizando modelos de redes aplicados às redes sociais online, conforme descritos nos trabalhos de Recuero (2005, 2014) e Lima-Lopes (2017, 2018) e; (ii) pelo discurso contido nas postagens, segundo o Sistema de Avaliatividade (MARTIN e WHITE, 2005) e suas aplicações em Língua Portuguesa (VIAN JR et. al, 2010). Foi considerada para esta pesquisa a utilização no Twitter da hashtag #Dia28EuVouTrabalhar, criada e disseminada com o intuito de contrariar a Greve Geral marcada para o dia 28 de abril de 2017, cujo objetivo era protestar contra as reformas trabalhista e da previdência. A raspagem de dados e os grafos de conexão foram feitos com o auxílio dos softwares NodeXL e Gephi, respectivamente. Ao final, observou-se que os principais influenciadores na rede tinham grande importância na disseminação do discurso de ódio, pois o grande número de seguidores possibilitou o espalhamento em larga escala. Vale ressaltar que o nó central da rede estudada era um deputado estadual do Rio de Janeiro e filho de um político com pretensão à presidência da República. A principal avaliação expressa nas postagens, em relação aos sentimentos, foi a insatisfação com o partido político que se manteve na presidência do Brasil por catorze anos e que fora interrompido por um impeachment, no ano anterior a esta greve. Já em relação ao Julgamento, as postagens revelaram uma descrença quanto à ética e confiabilidade tanto em relação aos grevistas quanto aos organizadores. Com isso, pode-se observar que a repetição e padronização de discursos estigmatizados, bem como sua pulverização em mídia social, foram - e ainda são - utilizadas como instrumento para conseguir o apoio popular.

“Fearless, powerful, Filipino”: identity positioning in the hashtag activism of #BabaeAko

ABSTRACT This study investigated the discursive production and contestation of identities in the Philippine hashtag campaign, #BabaeAko (“I am a woman”). Using Slocum-Bradley’s Positioning Diamond (2009) it explored the relational process of identity negotiation between the women of the campaign and the President along with his supporters. Explicit utterance of the identity category “woman” with attributes of fearlessness and power, and sustaining such positioning across social episodes, allowed #BabaeAko advocates to resist oppressive attributions grounded on structural inequalities. In addition, the twofold storylines of calling out misogyny and calling for solidarity established the discursive activism of the campaign as both “talking back” and “calling for” likeminded individuals. Findings are further discussed in relation to hashtag feminism and political action along with the implications of identity claiming to feminist online mobilization.

Hashtag Activism: Exploring The Church Must Vote Campaign in Nigeria

Socio-political activism and its relationship with digital media diffusion is an on-going subject of considerable debate among observers and scholars globally. This work creates a research trajectory on Nigeria by investigating the contributions of social media in the implementation of The Church Must Vote campaign. It examines the effects of connective action and clicktivism on political mobilization and evaluates how Christians used social media to increase their civic vitality during the 2019 general elections. A total of 6,951 online content, including 42 YouTube videos posted by the users of the hashtag, #thechurchmustvote, were explored via social networking analysis. Findings show that social media played a significant role in the success of the campaign and served as education channels to advise Christians on the need to participate in the elections. The impressive outcome elicits the recommendation that Nigerians should consider hashtag activism or clicktivism as a valuable political engagement system.

From Hashtag Activism to Inclusion and Diversity in a Discipline

From Hashtag Activism to Inclusion and Diversity in a Discipline