Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014

The Power of the #Hashtag

When a social media user thinks of hashtags, his mind might turn to the tweet he sent

earlier (“Standing up while doing homework because otherwise I’d fall asleep

#TheStruggleIsReal #CollegeLife”), or his mind might turn to the top trends he glanced through

on Twitter ten minutes ago (#5SOSFallon, #JakesBigNewsTonight). A typical social media user

rarely thinks of the ways that hashtags on social media have globally stimulated ideas and alerted

about issues. The power of the hashtag has been employed to promote political campaigns,

commemorate significant worldwide events, and kick start social movements.

Recently, political campaigns have integrated social media and hashtags. Barack

Obama’s political campaign has gone down in history as the first time social media, hashtags

included, made a significant difference in a political campaign. In the 2012 election especially,

hashtags played an important role. In fact, #Obama is one of the most popular political hashtags

to date. More specifically though, both Obama, who carried with him a significant social media

following from his 2008 campaign, and Mitt Romney had what Bloomsberg.com labeled as

“#Hashtagwars” during the election process. When President Barack Obama christened Mitt

Romney’s policy modifications as “Romnesia,” #Romnesia was trending worldwide within

twenty-four hours (Goldman). Also, during an Obama/Romney debate, Romney “said...that he

ordered up ‘binders full of women’ to bring gender diversity to his Massachusetts cabinet,” and

within minutes, a hashtag had appeared, organizing the Twitter posts, Facebook posts, and

memes about his controversial statement (Goldman). Even more generally, during the two

candidates’ debates, Americans were posting using #Debate up to 400 thousand times (Doctor).

President Barack Obama’s 2008 election was the first to introduce serious marketing through

social media, and in the 2012 election, he stepped up his game, paid attention to hashtags,

Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014interacted with other accounts (like Romney’s), and gave people things to post and repost about

using common hashtags as an organizing method.

President Obama’s campaign kick started social media and hashtag usage not only for

presidential campaigns but also for politics in general. An article from Salesforce Marketing

said, “The trend now involves the use of increasingly creative hashtags from both the Democrats

and the Republicans taking direct aim at each other’s positions on policy.” Politicians strive to

have their hashtags gain enough attention to be noticed by news outlets or to be listed on

Twitter’s top trends. In fact, according to Twitter Media, in government and political tweets,

tweets with hashtags receive thirty percent more retweets than tweets without hashtags receive.

Statistics like this one encourage politicians to use hashtags on social media to argue, promote,

and inform.

Hashtags also played a role in the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, especially in

informing. The natural disaster created a global social media stir in its aftermath. After the

earthquake, worried family and friends overloaded the cellular and landline networks in search of

learning information about loved ones. When they realized telephoning was not working, people

jumped on something that was – the Internet and, more specifically, social media. In fact, Twitter

was exploding with 1,200 tweets a minute coming out of Tokyo shortly after the earthquake

(“Twitter Once Again Proves Its Worth in Japan Earthquake Aftermath”). This mass amount of

tweets inspired Twitter Japan to publish specific hashtags, in both English and Japanese, geared

toward organizing the incredible amount of posts. For example, if the tweet was about general

earthquake information, one could use #Jishin; if the tweet was requesting rescue, one could use

#J_j_helpme. Twitter Japan also listed hashtags for evacuation and medical information (#Hinan,

#311care) as well as verification of individuals’ safety (#Anpi). According to a chart by Topsy,

Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014the hashtags were successful, with #Jishin reaching up to 400 thousand significant and valid

uses. Hashtag users also used #J_j_helpme approximately 150 thousand times and #Anpi a little

over 100 thousand times, just in the two days after the earthquake (“Twitter Once Again Proves

Its Worth in Japan Earthquake Aftermath”). The Japanese utilized social media and hashtags to

enhance the initial recovery process from the natural disaster.

The social media spread, however, did not stop in Japan. Another chart on Topsy

documented that, globally, twitter users mentioned “Japan” almost 200 thousand times, and they

mentioned “earthquake” close to 160 thousand times in the two days following the disaster

(“Twitter Once Again Proves Its Worth in Japan Earthquake Aftermath”). To commemorate this

event, more hashtags, such as #PrayForJapan and #JapanQuake, appeared in posts from around

the world, assuring Japan that they were not alone (Liepmann). Not only did hashtags like these

ones enhance the recovery process in Japan, they also enhanced global awareness of the disaster.

Because social media is such a global entity, hashtags have become news networks for

people. The speed social media and hashtags allow is shocking and often faster than professional

news stations. It is becoming more and more common for news to break on Twitter and then to

spread on Twitter. In fact, most people would give the response that they learned about the Japan

earthquake on social media rather than on the five o’clock news, and this idea goes for other

events as well, such as the Boston Marathon bombing or the 2012 Colorado wildfires. Hashtags

allow for easy searching of posts about events, and they clue people in to the latest information

on the event.

Hashtags enlighten users of the latest information in social movements as well. One of

the latest social movement hashtags to hit social media is #HeForShe. Emma Watson’s campaign

for feminism is directed toward involving both men and women to bring about gender equality.

Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014The HeForShe campaign website describes the cause as “a solidarity movement for gender

equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for

the benefit of all” (heforshe.org). Watson delivered a speech to the United Nations on September

20, 2014 to launch the campaign, and within hours after the video of the speech was posted,

social media was buzzing with #HeForShe. Watson promoted the hashtag from the beginning by

encouraging supporters to use #HeForShe and by using the hashtag herself. She tweeted on

September 21, “Wonderful men out there. I’m launching a campaign – #heforshe. Support the

women in ur lives and sign up here now! <3 heforshe.org” (Twitter). That tweet alone has

received over 29 thousand retweets and more than 37 thousand favorites. Not only has the

hashtag itself been used over 80 thousand times (just in the hours following the campaign’s

launching), but celebrities have also embraced the cause and posted #HeForShe on social media

(Molloy). (Chris Colfer, Russell Crowe and Harry Styles are just a few of these influential men

using the hashtag [Nudd].) #HeForShe delivered their campaign with the intention of using a

hashtag to spread the idea, which has proved to be a successful technique.

It is becoming clearer that social media and hashtags are the one of the most, if not the

most, influential and successful technique that a movement can use to enlighten the people of the

world about its cause. #HeForShe is a brilliant example of that. The hashtag links together

people’s stories and ideas about the HeForShe campaign. The hashtag is attention getting and

easy to remember. The hashtag is searchable. The hashtag relates to the name of the movement;

in fact, in HeForShe’s case, it is the name of the movement. Hashtags like #HeForShe help social

media spread news about social movements faster and more directly than any technique ever

used before.

Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014

Hashtags are powerful influences when it comes to social movements, worldwide events,

and politics. Plenty of examples exist of hashtags impacting politics and government, global

happenings, and public causes. These examples demonstrate that hashtags are not all simply

random words or phrases placed directly behind a pound symbol. While some hashtags are

menial and unhelpful, impactful hashtags do exist, and these hashtags are changing the world –

one social media post at a time.

Jaime Hillegonds“Tools of the Trade” Essay2 October 2014

Works Cited

Doctor, Vanessa. "#Debate: Obama Finally Fires Back at Romney." Hashtags.org. N.p., 17 Oct.

2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

"Essentials Government & Politics: The Impact of Tweeting with Photos, Videos, Hashtags and

Links." Government & Politics: The Impact of Tweeting with Photos, Videos, Hashtags

and Links. Twitter Inc., n.d. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

Girard, Mike. "Social Media Hashtags Become a Political Weapon of Choice." Salesforce

Marketing Cloud. N.p., 22 May 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

Goldman, Julianna. "Obama Winning Social Media, If #Hashtagwars Really

Matter."Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2014.

HeForShe. UN Women, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2014.

Liepmann, Erica. "Twitter, Facebook Become Vital During Japan Earthquake." The Huffington

Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Mar. 2011. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Molloy, Mark. "Emma Watson’s #HeForShe Campaign Inspires Men to Fight for Gender

Equality." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Nudd, Tim. "Harry Styles, Russell Crowe & More Support Emma Watson with #HeForShe

Selfies." PEOPLE.com. Time Inc., 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

"Popular Twitter #Hashtags for #Politics." Independent Concerns. Liberty Blog, n.d. Web. 27

Sept. 2014.

Schaffer, Neil. "5 Important Things Japan Taught the World about Twitter in 2011."Business

Community. N.p., 23 Dec. 2011. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

"Twitter Once Again Proves Its worth in Japan Earthquake Aftermath." Royal Pingdom RSS.

N.p., 14 Mar. 2011. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.