9 Despite its widespread presence today, the hashtag was slow to gain prominence: During the second half of 2013, it appeared on Twitter a total of just 5,106 times (or about 30 times a day).īoth the use of the hashtag and the influence of the broader Black Lives Matter movement accelerated greatly in August 2014 when Michael Brown, a black teenager, was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The phrase “black lives matter” was first used by a black community organizer in a Facebook post following the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Over time, the volume of #AllLivesMatter tweets has generally moved in parallel with that of #BlackLivesMatter. That hashtag has been used a total of 1.5 million times, about one-eighth as often as #BlackLivesMatter. 8 An early timeline of the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtagsĪll told, from its initial appearance in mid-2013 through March 2016, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has appeared on Twitter almost 11.8 million times.Īs a direct response to #BlackLivesMatter, some on Twitter began using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter. As a result, the growth of the movement offline was directly linked with the online conversation. ![]() Organizers of Black Lives Matter made social media – and specifically the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter – a centerpiece of their strategy. This was the case with the Black Lives Matter movement. In mid-2014, as the issue of use of force by police gained national attention due to several high profile cases involving black men, some activists promoted hashtags as a way to identify their messages and display solidarity. While most hashtags are developed organically, some groups deliberately use hashtags to promote a message. In 2009, Twitter began to hyperlink and compile hashtags, making them searchable and increasing their utility as identifiers. Historically, hashtags developed as an informal method of highlighting ideas in unformatted text and trying to grow conversation around a topic. (A previous Pew Research Center study surveyed Americans on their awareness of and attitudes towards issues of racial equality.) These tweets (13.3 million in total) were then analyzed using Crimson Hexagon’s algorithmic tool to determine their subject matter and tone. According to Twitter, #Ferguson was the most used social-issue hashtag in the 10-year history of the platform, while #BlackLivesMatter was third.Īlong with examining tweets that mentioned race in a general sense, the Center’s analysis looked at all tweets that included the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtags from July 12, 2013, to March 31, 2016. Two of the top three were directly related to issues of race. On Twitter’s 10-year anniversary, the site published a list of the most used hashtags related to social causes. ![]() In recent years, social media have become a common way for political groups and social movements to organize.
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