This article seems to be written by twitter users for twitter users. Being just a preface followed by what is effectively a screenshot of a twitter conversation, anyone who dislikes reading twitter posts will end up ignoring most of the article. The discussion being on twitter also provided a specific perspective from the respondents. Being a Q&A session more than an article, the article lacked a definite thesis but the respondents’ general opinion was towards the idea that hashtag activism encourages awareness which can be beneficial to its cause. The objective of this piece was to create a more exact representation of what twitter activists think about their efforts and what they think those efforts can achieve.
I enjoyed the method of asking questions about twitter on twitter, polling the people trying to create change on what they think they are accomplishing. The deliberate inclusion of twitter activist Stacia Brown was a simple way to ensure that activists’ opinions were heard. Some of the hashtags mentioned in the article I remember being popular, the #Kony2012 and #BringBackOurGirls being subjects, if not hashtags I remember. Many of the participants say that those that don’t see the tangible effects of hashtag activism don’t understand the idea, but then those people fail to elaborate on what the idea is. Considering the conversation is on twitter, I can understand their brevity, but what is their interpretation of the idea of hashtag activism?
Perhaps the diffuseness and the brevity of the contributions is itself saying something about what hashtag activism is – a kind of activism that has as many definitions as it does participants? If you think about the fact that anyone who has a Twitter account can be a hashtag activist, without any training or even necessarily having the same interpretation of the hashtag they’re posting on as others who are doing the same thing, it’s going to be hard to sum up any statements about what it all means. And there are definitely people posting on activist hashtags who would furiously resist the identity of “hashtag activist,” too.