Hashtag activism plays a major role in digital activism landscape since it has the ability to reach a countless amount of people. This massive reach has brought people together and united them under a cause, but in an unstructured manner which is something that traditional society is still getting acclimated to. As Jen Schradie mentioned in her article, “building and sustaining a political movement, even an online movement, still requires organization.” Even though this is a fairly new outlet for activism, it still requires some structure to function effectively. Hashtag activism is a medium and stepping stone into the creation of more structured online movements. Social media is optimized for the delivery of short messages which is why “hashtagging” can be seen as an ideal way of protest. The key thing about hashtags is that they are memorable. When people see a hashtag pertaining to a movement, they will automatically recognize it and it attracts more people to a cause. #BlackLivesMatter has been a major breakthrough in the hashtag activism and social media scene. People from around the world were given the opportunity to defend their opinions through a unified method: a hashtag. This type of activism has even opened the doors for celebrities to voice their opinions on certain issues.

In the photo above, FLOTUS Michelle Obama openly shows her support for the #BringBackOurGirls movement which sparked from the kidnapping of Nigerian girls from a boarding school. It is interesting that she chose to use the hashtag to show her activism as opposed to using just posting a video speaking about the topic or just posting a status on Facebook about it.

Another example of activism is what is happening at the moment with Trump winning the election. The hashtag #notmypresident arose after the controversial election results. Young millenials are taking to Twitter to express their thoughts on what is happening to our country politically.

People are emotionally invested in the election results since this is a major change in the U.S. political climate. Currently, there are many cities protesting the outcome of this election. People are living in fear of what’s to come from this presidency. It is promising to see that people are organizing and uniting through social media to promote activism as this response is being written. Most of these protest groups were organized primarily through social media and hashtag activism. The power of social media activism is prevalent and effective since platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were able to unite people in less than 24 hours.