The Ferguson hashtag tweets are a collection of tweets which contain the phrase “#Ferguson”. This hashtag began trending after the death of unarmed black child Michael Brown at the hands of an armed, white police officer. Riots broke out as people stormed to Ferguson, Missouri as people wanted to bring attention to the issue of police brutality; specifically brutality of white police officers on black citizens. When the riots broke out police responded by bringing in very serious support to the point that the issue of police militarization began to be discussed. The police force had brought tanks, assault rifles, tear gas, and a number of other military grade weaponry. While the riots were going on reporters flocked to the area and many were arrested trying to capture news of the incident. During this whole ordeal the hashtag #ferguson took off and became the number one trending topic on twitter nationwide. People were able to keep up to date by the thousands of people in the city that were live tweeting events as they occurred. These were mixed in with people that felt the need to give their opinions on the events as they had unfolded.
There appeared to be a pretty even split as to those that agreed with the police officers in regards to self preservation and trying to quell the violence and rioting and those that believed that the officer had acted too far in taking the life of an unarmed black boy. This stemmed another disagreement which was how blacks vs whites are portrayed by the media. Some stations made Mike Brown appear to be a thug and a criminal mainly noting the fact that he had just robbed a convenience store prior to being killed by the police officer. Yet still other stations posted the image of Mike Browns high school graduation photo and mainly noted how he was shot six times when he was dead after the first shot. This lead to the creation of another hashtag; #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Under this hashtag people of all races posted a picture of themselves looking successful and professional (usually a graduation picture) next to a picture of them posing in an unprofessional manner such as drinking, smoking, holding up their middle finger, or at a party. The purpose of this was to emphasize that when whites are killed or even kill others they generally had positive pictures shown and are described as “mentally disturbed” while black people that are killed are made out to look like thugs.
The #Ferguson hashtag was meant to gather all of the tweets about Ferguson in the same place making it easier for people in a different area to follow the events as they unfolded. In addition to this it allowed people to easily spread their opinion on each event in real time. Without Twitter this event would not have gained the same media attention and amount of outrage. People have never been able to react and interact as immediately and effectively as they did during the events at Ferguson.
I appreciated the ease at which everybody’s opinion could be viewed. Also the fact that it allowed for the information to be immediately spread and viewed by everybody changed the way that the events unfolded. I can directly relate to this because I actively use Twitter so when people started using #Ferguson I interacted directly as it happened. The question that I am left with after going through these hashtags and links is: why is violence and hatred so prevalent in our society?
Your post, especially compared with Jeffrey’s right before it, shows the way that our own participation on Twitter shapes our experience of trending hashtags. I had forgotten about #iftheygunnedmedown until you mentioned it, but at the time I remember it was a powerful experience to see all those pictures! Even though some of our readings have talked about the ways that Twitter is a less personalized experience than Facebook, our experience of the data we find there is still hugely affected by our past and present perspectives.