#Hashtivism

Gabby Santoliquito

Blog 2

10/3/14

#Hashtivism

Before this course, I was someone who participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, bought a Livestrong bracelet and even changed my Facebook profile picture to the red equal sign. Why did I do this? Was I trying to “fit in” with the crowd and do something to make me feel better about myself? Were these things I decided to do and then completely forget that I did so, the second they weren’t in the news anymore? No; not the case at all. These different concepts and ideas to try to either spread awareness, raise money, or show support within social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., are collectively known as hashtag activism – Hashtivism.

               Hashtivism occurs all throughout the world and personally to me, is something that is not and should not be going away anytime soon and we’re actually lucky to have. We live in a day and age now where news spreads like wild fire, extremely quicker than it obviously has in the past from Twitter and Facebook through things such as retweets or sharing different articles. Hashtags bring together all and everything relating to the same topic or issue around the world. If you want to find a specific article or blog or story related to almost anything, you can simply search that hashtag and millions of different subjects and related items will appear.

               More recently, hashtags have been used to raise awareness about certain topics such as cancer, kidnappings, certain acts or movements and many other world-wide issues. Through these social media campaigns, more awareness than ever has been raised and without them, I truly do believe we would not have raised as much money as we did the past year for ALS (#ALSIceBucketChallenge) or previously for Haiti (#HaitiRedCross), or been as educated as we were about Kony (#StopKony) and the Defense of Marriage Act. Though this mindset may sound naïve, and fall a little too far on the “hype” side of the spectrum, I think it’s better to approach Hashtivism in this manner versus constantly looking down upon the idea as many people do and stay too close to the “hysteria” side of things. Yes, after a certain amount of time, specific hashtags and campaigns wear off. However, that is how our society works and will continue to work. We don’t focus on the same exact story every single day in the news. Our country and the world around us is constantly changing and it is completely normal to eventually move on while still keeping the importance of the past issues and campaigns in the back of our minds.

               This idea of Hashtivism can also relate to the ideas of the Media Richness Theory. Although people aren’t always directly communicating with others when they post certain videos or tweets, there is still an opportunity for friends and “followers” to communicate with them by commenting or responding to specific tweets with these previously mentioned hashtags. Hashtivism is an example of rich media. Creating world-wide awareness and raising millions of dollars for a various amount of charitable organizations is about as complex of a task as it comes, if you ask me. As a society and country, we need to utilize the most effective and efficient ways to go about certain things and when it comes to the media, Hashtivism is an extremely rich way to approach issues affecting all of those around us.