10 Assignments on Hashtags

I’m working on a series of assignments and classroom activities that will support the “Digital Assignments for Activist & Justice-Oriented Projects” presentation that I’m giving at the Computers and Writing Conference this year. Hashtags seem like the right place to start. Campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo have demonstrated that hashtags capture attention and can fuel justice-oriented social action.

Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl (2005) identify “two foundational aspects of collective action: (a) the binary choice to participate or not and (b) the role of formal organization.” As they unify voices around a common cause, hashtags provide “formal organization” for collective action using social media. In the same way that corporate logos and taglines work, hashtags can become the brand identity for a social movement. By adding a hashtag to a social media post, writers choose to participate and further to align their comments with others who use the same hashtag.

To use hashtags effectively in their activist and justice-oriented projects, students need first to think critically about how hashtags work in social activism (AKA hacktivism). These ten assignments and activities present opportunities for students to examine how hashtags have contributed to collective action in the past.

Assignments and Activities

1. Ask students to hashtag themselves.
   As an icebreaker, invite students to introduce themselves by hashtag. Have students list seven to nine hashtags that describe who they are, what they care about, and/or what they like and do. Students can post anonymously if they desire. Collect all of the hashtags for the class in one document. Students can enter their keywords in a Google Form to simplify this process. Go to the Voyant Tools website, and paste in the class list of hashtags to generate a word cloud showing frequency as well as additional statistics on the hashtags. As a class, discuss what the hashtag data reveals.
2. Tell the story of the local community hashtag.
   Begin by examining the story of a highly visible hashtag. Time‘s “The Silence Breakers: Time Person of the Year 2017” reviews people who spoke up during the #MeToo movement. Supplement the Time article with the 2018 Pew Research Center’s “How Social Media Users Have Discussed Sexual Harassment Since #Metoo Went Viral.” As they review the story behind the #MeToo hashtag, ask students to identify how the story connects with details on the impact of the hashtag. After examining the #MeToo story, ask students to choose a local hashtag used by community members to influence collective action. Suggest a chronological order for the stories, perhaps with flashbacks. Remind students of the importance of including a discussion of the impact of the hashtag (the “so what?” for their stories). As an alternative to writing a narrative essay, students can enter key moments that tell the story of their hashtags on a timeline, using a tool such as Knight Lab’s TimelineJS.
3. Create a one-page info sheet for a hashtag.
   After examining resources on info sheets on local issues, have the class create a list of useful information to include on an info sheet for a local community hashtag. At a minimum, lists should include the hashtag, details on who uses it, and its purpose. Further details depend upon the hashtags and how they are used. If students are examining existing hashtags, they can add some background information on the creation of the hashtag, for instance. Encourage students to create and add graphics to illustrate their info sheets. Students can add embedded posts that include photos or other graphics related to the hashtag.
   To support students as they structure their info sheets, use the Fact Sheets resources from Kent State.
4. Design an infographic for a local community hashtag.
   Have students read “Designing Effective Infographics” (2018) from the Nielsen Norman Group to learn about the characteristics of a strong infographic and use the information from the Nielsen Norman reading to analyze recent infographics. Once students understand the infographic genre, ask them to create infographics for local community hashtags. Share one or more of these readings from the Pew Research Center to demonstrate the kinds of data students can gather about their hashtags:
   • “Activism in the Social Media Age,” from the Pew Research Center (2018)
   • “#BlackLivesMatter Surges on Twitter after George Floyd’s Death,” from the Pew Research Center (2020)
   • “Posts Mentioning ‘Black Lives Matter’ Spiked on Lawmakers’ Social Media Accounts after George Floyd Killing,” from Pew Research Center (2020)
   • “How U.S. Lawmakers Have Discussed Asian Americans on Social Media,” from the Pew Research Center (2021)
5. Define and describe a hashtag.
   Ask students to write technical descriptions
   of their hashtags that explain what the hashtags are, how they are formed, and how they function. For example, students might discuss how various word or numbers are combined to form the hashtag. Have students include photos or embedded media that show the hashtag in use, integrating the graphics with the text description. Suggest students add details on history, privacy, and other background as appropriate for their hashtags.
6. Explain how (and why) to use a hashtag.
   Discuss the complex ways that hashtags are used, asking students to unpack rote practices and typical expectations. Consider questions such as the following:
   • Where do you include the hashtag—the beginning? the middle? the end? wherever it falls in the statement? How do you decide?
   • How does the social media tool that you use (for instance, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram) influence the way the hashtag is included?
   • How are hashtags used with other ways of communicating, like sound, photos, and drawings?
   • What persuasive information belongs in explanations of how to use a hashtag?

   Once students have explored the conventions for using hashtags, ask them to write step-by-step instructions for using a hashtag in a particular way (e.g. for a particular medium and purpose). Ask students to consider the audience for their instructions as someone who understands and uses social media personally but has never used social media as part of collective action in an organized way. Supplement the assignment with outside resources on Writing Instructions.

7. Propose or recommend how to build a collective action campaign with hashtags.
   After exploring how hashtags can be used as part of collective action, ask students to write a proposal or recommendation report on how to engage with hashtags as a company, nonprofit, or community. The audience for the project will depend upon the group involved. If a company will be participating, the audience might be marketing management within that company and possibly the company’s owners or executive directors. For a community-oriented project, the audience might be members of that community who are unsure how to participate or want to have a stronger impact. Encourage students to think broadly about the ways that hashtags can be used, rather than limiting themselves to a single kind of use, such as status posts on Twitter.
8. Curate an annotated bibliography that illustrates how a hashtag has been used for collective action.
   To learn about how hashtags work in community action campaigns, have students compose annotated bibliographies of resources on topics such as the stories behind hashtags, how hashtags evolve with use, viral distribution of hashtags, public impact of hashtags, or how to use hashtags effectively. Alternatively, students can focus on a particular hashtag. For instance, students can begin with an article like “The Hashtags that Brought Black Scientists Together,” from Nature (2021) or “How Black Lives Matter Came to the Academy,” from The New Yorker (2021) and then investigate the hashtags involved. Share the Annotated Bibliographies resources from the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to provide background information and tips for the genre.
9. Compose an FAQ about hashtag use in a collective action campaign.
   Ask students to imagine themselves as people who want to participate in a campaign but aren’t quite sure if they understand enough about how hashtags work in an organized campaign.
   Brainstorm questions and relevant issues that people may have about using hashtags for collective community action. Spend some time discussing how to phrase questions for the FAQ so they fit the language and style of the audience. Next, ask students to choose five or more questions and then provide clear and complete answers for each, again with attention to the language and style of the audience. Share advice on writing FAQs such as ZenDesk’s “8 great FAQ page examples and how to create your own” or Truckee Meadows Community College’s “FAQ Writing Guidelines.” If desired, talk about document design and the formatting tools in the composing software to ensure that they know how to make the separate questions and answers easy to read and use.
10. Write an Op-Ed encouraging support of a campaign by using a hashtag.
    Choose a hashtag that has been used as part of local community action, and write an op-ed that encourages readers to use the hashtag to share their support for the community action campaign.
    For background, read “Hashtag Activism Isn’t a Cop-Out,” from The Atlantic (2015) and “The Second Act of Social-Media Activism,” from The New Yorker (2020). As a class, discuss the successes and challenges of community hashtags as explored in the articles. Based on their reading and analysis, have students look critically at their hashtags, assessing the impact of their hashtag on the local community. Write your op-ed that encourages readers to use the hashtag to support the community action, using their research on its impact to support their argument. As students work on their op-eds, share the “How to Write an Op-ed or Column” from Harvard or the “Writing Opinion Editorials and Letters to the Editor” resources from the CDC’s “Community Action Toolkit: A Guide to Advancing Sex Education in Your Community” (2021) to support their understanding of the op-ed genre.

Integrating these Activities

Because these ten activities all deal with hashtags, each can be a segment of a larger course-long project on community action, social justice, or digital media.

• Students can spend the term working on a community action toolkit, including a variety of the projects on the list. The story behind the hashtag (#2 above) can become part of the opening of the toolkit, providing background on the campaign. The info sheet (#3) or infographic (#4) can be included in the toolkit to show the impact and use of the hashtag in the community action campaign. Instructions on how and why to use a hashtag (#6) can be part of the body of the toolkit, as they provide details on how to participate in the campaign. The FAQ (#9) can be included toward the end of the toolkit, to address questions not covered elsewhere in the document.
• Students can first write the info sheet assignment (#3) and then after gathering the data in the info sheet, they can convert their ideas into a more visual composition by creating infographics (#4).
• Students can write recommendation reports (#7), beginning their work with research on their hashtags, the community involved, and the intended influence and impact of using the hashtag. They can organize their research in an annotated bibliography (#8), which can be added to the appendix of the report (and referred to in the Methods and Results sections of the report).

References

Bimber, Bruce, Flanagin, Andrew J., & Stohl, Cynthia. (2005). Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment. Communication Theory, 15(4), 365–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2005.tb00340.x

Background Readings for Instructors

Haltiwanger, Shannon. (2014). Embracing Social Media AS PART OF A Storyteller’s Toolkit. History News, 69(4), 7–10.

Jackson, Sarah J., Bailey, Moya, & Welles, Brooke Foucault. (2020). #HashtagActivism: Networks of race and gender justice. The MIT Press.

Losh, Elizabeth. (2019). Hashtag. Bloomsbury Academic & Professional.

Shirky, Clay. (2011). The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change. Foreign Affairs, 90(1), 28–41.

Strickland, James. (2004). Just the FAQs: An Alternative to Teaching the Research Paper. The English Journal, 94(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.2307/4128843