It’s no surprise that the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is most visible on Twitter. The site published a list of the most used hashtags related to social causes and two of the top three (#Ferguson & #BlackLivesMatter) were directly related to issues of race. Many activists use and promote hashtags to unify the black community and show solidarity. Here’s a of the few interesting trends that researchers came across:
The day after a NY grand jury decided not to indict police officers in the death of Eric Garner on December 4, 2014, #BlackLivesMatter appeared 189,210 times in one day.
On October 13, 2015 when Senator Bernie Sanders defended the Black Lives Matter movement and denounced institutional racism, the hashtag appeared more than 127,000 times on Twitter the following day as users voiced their support for Sanders.
After the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, the hashtag appeared 120,067 times on August 9, 2015 and 98,518 times the next day.
Researchers also found six big “recurring communities” that talked about police violence and brutality. This included:
Black Lives Matter: a movement of activists and organizers who call for systemic change
Anonymous and BiPartisan Report: left-leaning hacktivist collectives
Black entertainers: celebrities who were vocally in support of the movement
Mainstream news organizations covering the stories
"Young black Twitter": young black people discussing the news
Conservatives who were vehemently in opposition to the movement
There were also a few other hashtags that were used in conjunction with #blacklivesmatter such as #handsupdontshoot, #icantbreathe, #justiceforall, and hashtags that were the names of the victims murdered by police. On the other hand, rivals of #blacklivesmatter used hashtags such as #alllivesmatter, #pantsupdontloot and #bluelivesmatter. This shows the ignorance of those who oppose the BLM movement because they do not understand the purpose of the movement and the reasoning behind it.
Here’s the official Twitter Page of the Black Lives Matter Movement https://twitter.com/blklivesmatter?lang=en
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/08/15/the-hashtag-blacklivesmatter-emerges-social-activism-on-twitter/
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/03/02/468704888/combing-through-41-million-tweets-to-show-how-blacklivesmatter-exploded