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 word 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.
