Hashtags and Habeus Corpus

Using the same examples from the last post, I analyzed how they were using hashtags in their recent posts. Here are the most recent hashtags used in posts on each page: Southern Poverty Law Center: few hashtags, #MuslimBan, #RefugeesWelcome, #blacklivesmatter ACLU: #blacklivesmatter, #netneutrality, #voting rights EarthJustice: #nomorelead, #wearejusttryingtobreath, #ClimateChangeIsReal Environmental Defense Fund: #ActOnClimate, #FourthWave  National Women’s Law Center: #WinsforWomen Here I found two things interesting, 1) a couple of orgs pages, SPLC and the NWLC, used hashtags rather infrequently, every 4 to 8 posts, and 2) most orgs used established hashtags rather than creating their own, the only org that seemed to be making their own was EDF. Thus, while all the orgs are clearly participating in the dialogue created by #activism, it is unclear which is more effective for promoting their own work and getting support for their organizations and projects. I'll c...

Here are some examples of legal advocacy organization twitter pagers: Southern Poverty Law Center: https://twitter.com/splcenter?lang=en ACLU: https://twitter.com/ACLU?lang=en EarthJustice: https://twitter.com/Earthjustice?lang=en Environmental Defense Fund: https://twitter.com/EnvDefenseFund?lang=en National Women’s Law Center: https://twitter.com/nwlc?lang=en Next we'll check out how they use hashtags in their posts.

Time to switch gears now and talk a bit about legal non-profit organizations since we are going to talk about the potential for hashtags promote awareness for their organizations and causes. Legal non-profits can take a number of different forms, but legal services organizations typically service low income individuals and are funded by state government and grants with minimal donation funding. Therefore, I am go to focus on organizations that get a majority of their funding from donations. Here is a list of these types of organizations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Legal_advocacy_organizations_in_the_United_States

Today I am just posting a link to the most comprehensive analysis I found of the #blacklivesmatter movement in the first year, both in terms of a chronological description and analysis of at least some of the implications. BEYOND THE HASHTAGS:#FERGUSON, #BLACKLIVESMATTER,AND THE ONLINE STRUGGLEFOR OFFLINE JUSTICE was published by American University's Center for Media and Social Impact, a source I plan to explore more in this project. The authors are Deen Freelon Charlton D. Mcilwain  and Meredith D. Clark. I will be using some of the insights from the analysis section in future posts. But I will leave you all with this insight from pg. 84, and let you contemplate the implications: "We also found that attempts to coordinate movement action were rare among the top tweets. By this we mean information about where protests would be held, invitations to participate, instructions on how to participate, and discussions about what kinds of actions should be held. We saw a few such t...

This week I will be exploring a few avenues of the black lives matter movement. Firs I would like to draw your attention to the following article by Guobin Yang which appeared in Media and Communication in 2016. Find it here: https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1500&context=asc_papers . It is a brief article that addresses how the hashtag form gives narrative and rhetorical agency to posts. Narrative form is about the flow of a narration and agency implies the ability and freedom to create that flow. Rhetorical is agency Guobin defines as "the capacity to act, that is, to have the competence to speak or write in a way that will be recognized or heeded by others in one’s community” citing (Campbell, 2005, p. 3). Thus, Guobin argues that the uniquely thematic, temporal, and social nature of hashtag movements lends them to both narrative and rhetorical agency. We can see a great example of these in the #blacklivesmatter movement because it "is the resul...

Adweek described the campaign as follows: "14-year-old  Ahmed Mohamed  became a symbol for the issue of American islamophobia when he was arrested for taking a homemade clock to school. Following his arrest,  social media rallied  using the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed as a show of support, which was used more than 300,000 times on Twitter, including one from  President Obama . Mohamed was also invited to visit Facebook, and offered a scholarship to MIT and an internship at Twitter." http://www.adweek.com/digital/2015s-top-5-social-activism-campaigns-blacklivesmatter-lovewins-more/ Ahmed was released and eventually no charges were filled. Since the issue no longer seems to be relevant the hashtag now seems to be used to make mocking posts and posts with racist undertones that certainly aren't helpful:  https://twitter.com/search?q=%23istandwithahmed. This is something that may need to be considered with very issue specific hashtags, the hashtag lingers ev...

The #bringbackourgirls campaign was possibly the largest #campain of 2014.  It was as a campaign intended to bring international attention to   276 Nigerian school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 .   I remember participating and following avidly for a few months, but then some girls were found and the rest well it just kind of fell off my radar sadly. As the Huffington post reported in it's 2014 article I posted last time, as of the end of 2014 there were still 218 girls in captivity. Well unfortunately not much has changed a few additional women have escaped  captivity, bu most remained as of April 2017. After three years it did not look good: https://www.thedailybeast.com/three-years-later-a-look-at-the-bringbackourgirls-catch-22 http://www.newsweek.com/chibok-girls-boko-haram-583584 It seems the fight continues, and begs the question, what if anything did the hashtag campaign accomplish? It seems int this case that international attention an...