Anyone who uses social media is
probably aware of the ubiquitous hashtag. What started as a simple way to tag
topics on internet chat rooms was then adopted by Twitter, and then spread to
many other platforms, including Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram. The way that
the hashtag is used has changed a lot in that time, evolving from a tag into a
way of deliberately communicating stances and ideas.
Barbara De Cock
and Andrea
Pizarro Pedraza found this to be the case when investigating the use
of the #jesuis hashtag (‘I am’). You
may recall that this hashtag came out of the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical
magazine. People on Twitter used the hashtag #jesuischarlie to express their support and solidarity with the victims
after the incident. De Cock and Pizarro Pedraza wanted to investigate the
phenomenon further, to see how the #jesuis
hashtag construction changed its meaning in different contexts. To do this, they
manually observed and monitored the #jesuis
hashtag over the course of a year, to better understand how it was being
employed. They then developed a script which gathered a sample of tweets using
the #jesuis construction between
March and April 2016.
They found 407 different
constructions, with four broad different uses: one set referring specifically
to terrorist attacks; one set to other disasters involving loss of life; one
set to other sad news stories; and one set which did not express solidarity in
the face of tragedy, but instead were critical or mocking of the whole concept.
These were most often used in conjunction with proper nouns, such as Charlie, Belge, ‘Belgium’, or Panama,
but occasionally with other kinds of nouns, such as in #jesuischien, ‘I am dog’ , after the death of a police dog during a
raid on a flat occupied in Belgium that was occupied by terrorists.
While the original hashtag expressed
solidarity with the loss of human life, De Kock and Pizarro Pedraza noticed a
broadening of its use through the four categories. For example, the #jesuisEcuador hashtag was for a natural
disaster, as opposed to a terrorist attack, but was still employed to express
solidarity with a loss of life. The use of the hashtag changed further still
regarding other causes; a French spelling reform inspired a hashtag #jesuiscirconflexe, or ‘I am circumflex’,
the diacritic used above certain French letters such as ê. While there is nothing tragic about a change of spelling, the
hashtag was still being employed as a way of expressing solidarity with those
who were unhappy about the proposed change. This also occurred with events
which concerned free speech, something that Charlie
Hebdo was seen to represent for a lot of sympathisers; the hashtag #jesuisBoehmermann was not used to
express solidarity with someone that had died, but rather with a comedian who
was being charged by the Turkish president for criticising him in a stand-up
routine.
As with many things that are
shown to align with a stance, the hashtag has been used to criticise or show
disalignment as well, often by using it ironically. For example, Charlie Hebdo themselves employed the
hashtag when the Panama papers news broke: when multiple politicians were found
to be hiding money to avoid tax. The #jesuisPanama
tag was ironic, feigning solidarity with a class of privileged people to
highlight their unethical behaviour. The research showed, then, that the
hashtag was being used in a variety of ways.
The authors briefly mention the
English #I am tag too, pointing to
the use of #I am Leicester to express
proud support after the unexpected win by the Leicester football team in the 216
Premier League competition So next time you are on any social media platform,
and you see the #jesuis tag or the #I am tag, you could have a think about
what kind of solidarity the author is trying to show, if any.
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De Cock, B., & Pizarro Pedraza, A. (2018). From expressing
solidarity to mocking on Twitter: Pragmatic functions of hashtags starting with
#jesuis across languages. Language in Society 47(2):1-21.
doi:10.1017/S0047404518000052
This summary was written by
Marina Merryweather
