From politics to social activism: How hashtag changed the world in a decade

The humble "#" is now powerful enough to infiltrate social media networks and launch grassroots campaigns against state and non-state actors alike.

Business Standard : From fashion trends to global events, the hashtag (#) has become the conspicuous symbol of the Twittersphere. What only a decade ago denoted a numerical symbol of no special significance or attribution is now a call to arms for causes that are many and varied.

The “#” is a social organiser, which emerged spontaneously and dynamically from the content generated and updated by social media users. The initial intent behind the “#”, when Twitter launched in 2006, lay in its simple use as a means of organising data and information. An indexing tool for grouping anything from the politically relevant to the culturally hip, the “#” soon found itself aligned with some of the most significant events in history.

Capturing a broad spectrum of the public’s preoccupations with popular culture, social exclusion, relief efforts following natural disasters or political conflict, the hashtag, as some have argued, has allowed for the efficient emergence of “certain types of communities and ad hoc publics forming and responding quickly to particular events and topical issues”. And these have developed a social and political power we have only recently begun to fully uncover and comprehend.

From #MeToo to #FreeIran, #iPhoneX to #Pope, #ClimateChange and #ImWithHer to #ConfirmKavanaugh, it is a conspicuous symbol of the electronic, highly mobile age in which we live, encouraging hundreds of millions of retweets, follows, and likes.

In 2015, the #RefugeesWelcome hashtag, retweeted endlessly by celebrities, politicians and the public, put pressure on European governments to accept asylum seekers displaced by conflict in Syria and focused the world’s attention on the plight of refugees attempting hazardous Mediterranean crossings.

The #EthnicCleansing associated with #Myanmar’s #Rohingya Muslims came to dominate headlines in 2016 and drove calls for the UN to probe reports of alleged violence and abuses in the region. Meanwhile, the #MeToo movement exposed unconscionable sexual abuses and triggered vital conversations about gender dynamics and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Social activism

Social network users are now in the business of political and social activism, triggering a fundamental rethinking of our duties and obligations to fellow citizens and strangers alike. The numerical proliferation of the “#” is therefore a definitive metric of success when it comes to raising awareness of key issues. Given that, globally, 335m Twitter users post 500m tweets a day and 80% of those reach mobile phones carried by an average user aged between 18 and 49, the potential is enormous.

The low cost of this direct participation has opened up possibilities for a two-way interaction between citizens and their governments. It means governmental and non-governmental actors are subject to far greater scrutiny and that public demands for accountability and transparency must efficiently be met... Read More