Hashtag Activism

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Max Weber the sociologist noted that sociology should be the study of "social action". Social action consists of actions of individuals who attach subjective meaning to their actions, who are in presence of others, who acknowledge their presence and orient his or her behavior to others. This social action must take place between animate beings. Reactive acts, imitative acts and spiritual acts are not considered social actions by Weber.

Hashtag has been first used by Twitter in 2007, in 2009 Twitter added hyperlinks to hashtags. Hashtags enable contents to be organized, enables more engagement, enables the users to reach target viewers. In the digital space, Hashtag Activism has been in rage. By Hashtag Activism, I mean to indicate all those sort of activism which starts in the digital space, where users indicate their support for a cause by using the appropriate hashtag. Recently the #MeToo hashtag activism saw many participants who shared their stories of sexual harassment on social media followed by the #MeToo hashtag. #WhyLoiter movement started by 3 women in Mumbai invited women to share photos of themselves in public spaces, with the aim of spreading the idea that  women are actively seeking to reclaim public spaces, which in a country like India work to exclude women.

The effectiveness of hashtag activism or feminism has often been questioned. Usually a hashtag movement involves people sharing their stories or relevant photos along with the hashtag in digitized space. On one hand, it enables to spread the message much faster and garner support of many different people cross- culturally, across the globe. Many people who can't actively participate on ground activism can participate in the digital space. Hashtag Activism also means it affords the relative anonymity of the web- a space which can be used responsibly, evading the dangers which often results from ground activism which comes in the form of stalking, sexual harassment, rape, death, etc. As the Digital Divide is shrinking, although not as fast as we would want it to be in India, greater mass of people can get involved in online activism. However in a country like India where the Digital Divide is very wide, the Hashtag activism fails to engage people without access to the internet. It only manages to engage the urban population- especially the urban youth who are active in social media. So Hashtag Activism is in itself a divisive activism- a kind of activism for a certain socio-economic class of people.

The idea of Hashtag Activism can be understood by employing the theory of Symbolic Interactionism. Meanings are not inherent in objects or words or language. Meaning is derived from interaction amongst different social agents. A particular Hashtag movement begin as a symbol, whose meaning is a shared meaning across a great mass of population.

If we consider who are involved in the Hashtag Activism, how much are they actually engaged in the activism? In an age were the use of popular hashtags makes the user more visible in the digital space, and in an age where there's information clutter in the digital space, users often use popular hashtags to "visibilize" their own content, even when they are not committed to the cause of the activism. Often Hashtag Activism turns into an imitative behavior, and like Weber says imitative behavior doesn't constitute a social action, neither does it involve concern for the cause.

So whether or not to engage with hashtag activism or it's effectiveness comes from the users of digital space- if they actually genuinely engage with Hashtag Activism for a cause then why not explore the prospect of a kind of activism which can spread across geographic locations cost effectively in short amounts of time, empowering the marginalized or affected communities to organize to raise their voice to be heard by many.