Hashtag activism is a phrase used on Twitter for Internet activism by media outlets. The term can also be used on any social media platform not only on Twitter, also on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok and some more to describe the act of supporting a cause by means mostly of sharing and discussion. It is probably the point of hashtag activism to talk to friends and followers about these issues in the hope that they will have the same details. This leads to extensive debate and makes change possible.
However, hashtags have also been used to debate social and social awareness. By increasing the number of fans around the world who have been unaffected by the problem, they can be viewed as a way to help or to begin a revolution. It enables people to speak and comment about a hashtag. Hashtag activism is a way to extend and democratize the use of media and allow everyone a way to express their points of view.
Chris Messina, former Google developer, created Hashtags in 2007. He wanted to create a platform for talks. This platform would be easy to access and easy to use on the phone. Its objective was to have an open source in which people would be encouraged to express their opinions freely about what they thought about the subject. This is a list of some significant activities and contains the categories of human rights, awareness, climate, and trends organize the following remarkable examples.
Womens’ Rights
#WomensMarch - On January 21, 2017, an estimated 2.6 million people marched around the world in response to the rhetoric of newly elected President Donald Trump. The march was primarily organized online via Facebook. The goal of the Women's March, now happening annually, is to raise awareness and defend human rights through peaceful protest.
#HeForShe - On 20 September 2014 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, there was a special event to introduce the HeForShe movement. It was hosted by Ambassador Emma Watson of UN Women Goodwill whose speech— about her own path to feminism and her call to involve men and boys in promoting gender equality — was widely circulated through social media.
#MeToo - #MeToo is a Twitter hashtag that raises awareness of sexual assault by encouraging survivors to share their stories. Tarana Burke initially used the hashtag in 2007, but was later popularized and brought to media attention on October 15, 2017, when Alyssa Milano, using Twitter, encouraged individuals to talk about their assault experience and say' Me Too.' The original purpose was to raise awareness but developed into a movement and the hashtag was used 19 million times in October 2018. The movement has sparked many other movements, such as #HowIWillChange, and has also resulted in certain punishments for the perpetrators. The #HimToo hashtag was developed as a reaction. This refers to the campaign in the social media for false violations.
#MosqueMeToo - #MosqueMeToo started in February 2018, following the #MeToo movement, that in October 2017 and the next months acquired worldwide prominence. Muslim women began to share their experiences of sexual abuse at Muslim holy sites and on pilgrimages such as Hajj, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, using the hashtag #MosqueMeToo.
#YesAllWomen - #YesAllWomen is a Twitter hashtag and social media campaign in which users share examples or stories of the misogy and violence against women. #YesAllWomen was created in response to another hashtag #NotAllMen, expressing that all women are affected by sexism and harassment, even if not all men are sexist. Women in all social media quickly used the Hashtag to share their misogyny and sexism experiences.
LGBT rights
#lovewins - In June 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide and led to the creation of the #lovewins hashtag. This hashtag has produced more than 4.5 billion Twitter impressions. President Barack Obama even joined in and tweeted with the hashtag.
#CheersToSochi - In 2014, protests against the recently enacted anti-gay legislation included corporate sponsors for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia. Among the sponsors was McDonald's, whose marketing included the hashtag #CheersToSochi, which was hijacked by Queer Nation's queer activist group.
Anti-discrimination
#thisis2016 - Following an anti-Asian incident in New York City in October 2016 and Michael Luo's subsequent open letter to the victim, The New York Times released a video entitled "#thisis2016: Asian-Americans Respond" The video featured Asian Americans who had been experiencing racism. Subsequently, #thisis2016 tended to illustrate Asian Americans ' bias as a hashtag. Finally, after an open letter to the New York Times, #BrownAsiansExist was influential in voicing its frustration with the lack of South and Southeast Asian Americans in its video "#thisis2016."
#OscarsSoWhite - #OscarSoWhite is a hashtag initiative initiated by the April Reign editor-in-chief of BroadwayBlack.com and inspired by the 2016 Oscar nominees. Although several films in that year portrayed the African American leaders who received criticism and guild recognition, all 20 actors nominated for lead and supportive categories were white. The campaign sparked a conversation about diversity, portrayal, and racism in the film industry. The campaign is correlated with the causes of increasing external pressure to change the racial membership of the academy substantially.
Climate
#FridaysForFuture - #FridaysForFuture is a protest against lack of action on the Climate Crisis that began in August 2018, after Greta Thunberg was 15 years old, who sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks. She posted on Instagram and Twitter what she was doing, and it soon became viral. On 8 September, Greta decided to continue to strike every Friday until the Swedish policies provided a safe path well below 2-degree C, i.e. in line with the Paris Agreement. Since then, #FridaysForFuture and #ClimateStrike became viral and many students and adults began protesting outside their parliaments and town halls as a worldwide movement.
#ProtectOurWinters - #ProtectOurWinters is a nonprofit movement started by snowboarder, Jeremy Jones and other winter sports athletes to raise awareness of global warming and climate change. In 2016, the movement began as a reaction to 2016 being one of the warmer years. The campaign reveals the effects of global warming with evidence about the winter sports industry and the percentage increase in carbon dioxide
#ClimateChangeIsReal - #ClimateChangeisReal was the ownerless campaign launched by Here Now for Earth Day 2015 to help focus on Earth's greatest challenge: climate change. The campaign has hit 265 million with tweets from different celebrities, such as President Barack Obama, Marnie the Dog, Mark Ruffalo and Adrian Grenier, the Smosh Brothers, Adidas, Unilever and others all sharing the same message of unity— Climate Change is Real and so are the solutions.
#EarthDay - Earth Day is a worldwide annual event to demonstrate environmental protection support on April 22. First held in 1970, the network now includes Earth Day events in more than 193 countries coordinated globally.
Awareness
#BringBackOurGirls - In May 2014, Boko Haram abducted over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria, refusing to return the girls. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was created and used to keep the story in the news and bring international attention to it. The hashtag was used by the first lady, Michelle Obama, to raise awareness of the abducted girls and the hashtag itself received 2 million retweets.
#WhyIStayed/#WhyILeft - A media release of security camera footage in 2014 that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée, Janay Rice, sparked public conversation about why abuse victims remain in abusive relationships. Beverly Gooden, writer and survivor of domestic abuse, launched the #WhyStayed initiative via Facebook, with a view to shifting the tone of the conversation. The hashtag began to trend at national level five hours after its creation and was used more than 46,000 times that day.
#PrayforParis - A series of terrorist attacks occurred in Paris on the night of 13 November 2015. Several individuals, governments and other organizations around the world expressed solidarity with France and with the victims in reaction to these events. In the hours following the attack, certain Parisians used social media, especially the Twitter hashtag #PorteOuverte as in French means Open Door, to offer strangers stranded by the attack overnight a shelter. The hashtag has been on the trend worldwide. A modified version of London-based French graphic designer Jean Jullien's International Peace Symbol, in which the center gap was modified to match Eiffel Tower, was extensively distributed. The symbol was widely shared with #PeaceForParis, #PrayForParis, #PrayForFrance and #JeSuisParis.
#FakeNews - While "fake news" or politically motivated disinformation (PMD) is not a new occurrence, the sentiment and spread of mistrust of news coverage has become more noticeable since the U.S. election cycle of 2016. In 2016, the Hashtag #FakeNews became famous after Donald Trump suggested that the negative press coverage he was receiving was because of the fact that false stories were circulating. From the outset, there has been a growing number of policy bills and legislation on the spread of inaccurate information globally, which politized the issue further and raised concern about imminent censorship.
Conservatives and proponents alike opposed the idea of hashtag activism. Some supporters argue that using social media is a good idea to activism because it enables people from around the world to connect in a short period. Instead of taking specific action to make a difference, criticism is asking that hashtag activism leads to actual change as users simply indicate that they care.
Hashtag activism can be viewed as a telling agency since it involves readers in the co-production of various hashtags. Every hashtag has a start, conflict and end as a narrative. People can share their stories of the hashtag, sentiment and individual thoughts. The entire story creates a huge hashtag narrative which promotes discussion and engagement through reading, posting and retweeting. Twitter alone has 330 million active users who are able to see viral content from around the world. Hashtag activism encourages discourse and perspective from people living through experience rather than within the boundaries of media outlets.
Hashtag activism has also been shown to impact policies and decisions made by organizations. It is able to achieve this because it provides organizations with a quick and easy way to view public opinion and outcry.
Hashtag's activism was supported by key social media campaigners like Bev Goodman who initiated the movement #WhyIStayed for women suffering domestic abuse. In an NPR interview, she stated that, "the beauty of hashtag activism is that it creates an opportunity for sustained engagement, which is important for any cause.”