The Game of Hashtags

MAKE NO MISTAKE, tweets and their hashtags can be an effective tool for online activism. Whether it be spreading the word for campaigns, or raising awareness to important issues, saying they can't, would be denying what’s right in front of you. The fact that some governments are trying to introduce complete bans to Twitter in their respective countries is proof that an impact is made.

A recent example includes China banning search requests regarding the Tiananmen Square in order to erase this tragic history.

Even photos like this were taken down!

Among the images censored in China on Tiananmen anniversary... pic.twitter.com/bF6Jdqz44I
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) June 6, 2014

because it looked too much like this

Twitter, the tool that your government would appreciate you only using to talk about fun stuff like the world cup, or cats.  Our focus and concern then should not be if Tweets get the message across, but if we really understand what the message is.

Tweets, a string of words limited to 140 characters, are trying to communicate a point by cramming as much information as possible into a small sentence or two. So it's quite understandable that this can lead to some misinterpretation, but would you blame a hammer for hitting your thumb? 

Power to the Tweeters

"I've always had mixed emotions about what's been coined as "hashtag activism," and that term has definitely been thrown at this hashtag over the past few days.  I've openly pondered before how much good social media hashtags to "raise awareness" actually does, and how slapping a hashtag on something is more often a quick way to pat oneself on the back for being moral than it is a true way to take action...

But #YesAllWomen is truly beyond awareness and hashtag activism..."

-Jenni Chiu

On their own, tweets are quite harmless, but when there are enough tweets, people notice. Especially if the subject is addressing serious issues. #YesAllWomen, still on-going, was sparked by the tragic shootings in California targeting women by Elliot Rodgers. This served to open the floodgates on a topic that was seemingly invisible to people around the world, unless you are a woman. The hashtag campaign #YesAllWomen has now become a voice for women and has steered public opinion on feminism 

From this

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”  
- Pat Robertson


To this.

Still, people have their doubts on the effectiveness of tweets and hashtags. For many it is a challenge to understand what the root cause is for many of the issues behind the hashtag on their screens.

Concerns

Like a game of telephone (or Chinese whispers), tweets distort the original message. #BringBackOurGirls was in response to the mass kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria by the terrorist group Boko Haram. Many thought the issue was about Boko Haram. 

"Domestically, the #BringBackOurChildren campaign isn't aimed at the perpetrators of the attack: Boko Haram seem unlikely to be swayed by tweets (remember, their name literally means "Western education is sinful"). It's aimed at the government who have appeared inept the Boko Haram problem for too long. Critics of Goodluck Johnathan's government are quick to point out that Nigeria's army has left hundreds dead in its fight against the militant group, many of whom were civilians. Economic factors are at play too: while Nigeria's economy may have been declared to be the biggest in Africa recently, living standards are still low, glaringly so when compared to those of the Nigerian political elite."

-Adam Taylor

Tweeting in response to these controversial topics is doing nothing more than giving yourself a pat on the back. This may be true, but the problem is not that someone is just doing it for a quick feel good. If this were the case, then the pros of spreading awareness would far outweigh the cons of somebody getting off on "feeling" good about themselves. 

The real problem is that people may not even know what they are tweeting about when they choose to get involved for this reason! eg. #Kony2012.

The result of the viral Kony campaign may have helped chase Kony out of the country, but in doing so, international demands to capture Kony eased pressures on other more dangerous rebel groups, like M23. Since the Kony Campaign, these other groups have had more freedom to operate in a similar region. Resources were diverted away from them and towards capturing Kony. Granted, the video's purpose was indeed to motivate people to speak out against Kony and raise awareness, which it achieved. Unfortunately, this didn't address the climate which allowed for the rise of someone like Kony and others like him.

This reminds me of a saying carpenters use "measure twice, cut once". Before you tweet, make sure you check the facts, twice. Many people have been caught out believing something that a quick query on Google could have given them a better understanding on. Always check for both supporting information and objective information, then decide on what to tweet.

Tweets lessen the severity of the issues.  Not true, without the use of hashtags and tweets, they may never have been recognised on the global stage. The real cause for our lapse in empathy or compassion isn't due to Twitter, its part of being human.

Unity

Many philosophers and researchers, like Peter Singer, believe that as a species, we've always been more concerned about matters that are closer to our families and communities. 

"Our species has spent millions of years evolving as social mammals with offspring who need their parents' care for many years. For most of these millions of years, parents who did not care for their children during this period of dependence were unlikely to pass on their genes. Hence our concern for the welfare of others tends to be limited to our kin, and to those with whom we are in cooperative relationships, and perhaps to members of our own small tribal group."

How does one challenge a trait that was instilled in us by nature itself? One idea is to change our perception of the planet we live on. Billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates said something similar to Forbes when he was asked what advice he would give to the next US president to improve American Competitiveness and innovation. Bill said

 'I tend to think more about improving the entire world as opposed to relative positions. Otherwise you could say "Hey, World War II was great because the US was in its strongest relative position when that was over.""

This idea of a globalized state of empathy is of course no small task, and it won't happen overnight. There are many other factors that affect why we care more about one topic over the other, but at the end of the day, we are one race, and we have one Earth. We are much closer to one another than you would like to think.

Carl Sagan reminds us of this with his timeless essay "The pale blue dot".

#ThatsAWrap

Yes, Twitter and hashtags make for an effective tool in online activism and communication in general. The internet and social media has given us a powerful medium for communicating to one another, and so our challenge is to learn how to use these tools better.

 Don't be afraid to speak out for what you believe in or what you think, but it doesn't hurt to check the facts. In fact it may hurt NOT to check them. What, how, and to who you decide to tweet to could support the militarization of a foreign country, OR, it could support a change for the better.