Hashtag: The Virtual and Physical Worlds Collide
#BlackLivesMatter began as a way for the African American community to fight back against racial violence that they felt they were receiving as a whole from law enforcement. Similarly, #MeToo was created as a way for women who have suffered from sexual abuse or harassment to band together and show the gravity of the issue of sexual abuse.
Hashtags create a very unique interaction on social media. Hashtags began with the use of Twitter, but quickly spread to other platforms as well. They are used on Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat, but more importantly, they create a group atmosphere that intertwines each platform. Hashtags can be used in social media posts such as Facebook posts, Tweets, or on Instagram captions. Users can then search the hashtag to find posts that contain it which allows them to read other posts about the hashtag they are using. Trending hashtags can also be indicative of current events, as is the case with #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, specifically with #MeToo which promoted victims of sexual abuse or misconduct to call their abusers out and shed light on the issue at large. This creates a platform in which victims can band together and no longer suffer in silence. It creates a community in which they can find people who have suffered from similar issues and work through them together. Users of specific hashtags all have one common belief or goal, and for #BlackLivesMatter, the goal is to make their audience aware that even in 2017, we are fighting a race war, but we don’t have to be.
Hashtags can be used to define a group and can take a highly controversial issue that is of interest in real life and applies it to the realm of social media: they are using social media as a way to make a difference in the real world, or to create a community of support. Bijan Stephen states that, “in the 1960s, if you were a civil rights worker stationed in the Deep South and needed to get some urgent news out to the rest of the world…you would likely reach straight for a telephone” but the hashtag is 2017’s telephone; the hashtag can reach an even broader audience much faster than the telephone (Stephen). The hashtag proving to be the “new telephone” reiterates the transition to the epoch of electracy, as we have moved from orality and literacy to a means of communicating and living our lives in aid of technology, such as our smartphones which enable us to communicate via apps such as Twitter and Facebook.
