Digital Activism: The Age of the Hashtag
Social Media allows for users all over the world to engage, communicate, and relate to others across the globe, and also helps us to find others we share the same views with and can relate to. The Twitter format allows for people to search a certain topic by its hashtag (used as a metadata tag) or if the hashtag is popular enough this project it starts to “Trend” which means that it will be promoted on the side tab of the users feed. By utilising these hashtags it allows for a topic to be promoted on each sidebar and be seen by a huge number of people across the world and for these people to find the topics and relate.
During a visit to York University in Toronto, the comments of one police officer would spark a worldwide movement driven by social media, the comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised” drove the movement against victim blaming in sexual assault cases (Hill 2013). The movement sparked was the now annual Slutwalk which takes place across cities all over the globe. Within a year of the first Slutwalk arranged by the York University students, there were similar marches in over 250 cities across the globe (Hill 2013). The use of the hashtag made it easy for anyone to plan an event in their own city simply by using #slutwalk on Twitter (Hill 2013).
Another of these Twitter Hashtag movements came after a series of reported and recorded deaths of black men, women, and children at the hands of law enforcement across the world, mainly in the United States, which sparked to the community-led protests and the #blacklivesmatter movement (Watson et al. 2016). In another world trending protest, thousands of people across the globe protested police brutality against abuse of power by law enforcement in general but especially in the black community. The movement “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” (Blacklivesmatter.com)
The use of the hashtag activism makes it easier than ever for different groups across the globe to come together and participate as part of a network without needing to be part of the originating organisation of the movement (Hill 2013). The global reach of these communities and the way the metadata works for users allows for people across different walks of life to find each other and to contribute to a cause by even as little as a hashtag. It creates a space for people to be comfortable sharing experiences of their own when once they were silent, as happened with assault cases in the Slutwalk movement. Social media brings people together for a common cause without needing to be together physically.
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