Beirut Spring

Blogging Lebanon
since 2005

About

This post is more than 14 years old

Remember that politics move quickly, and people and their opinions evolve.

Learn This Term: “Hashtag Revolt”

October 4, 2011 · Mustapha Hamoui

What’s in common between the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados movement, the London Riots and Occupy Wall Street? These are all “Hashtag revolts” as observed by the very perceptive Jeff Jarvis:

A hashtag is not like a marketing, media, or political message, whose creator thinks it can be created and controlled. It is not like the namespace in domains, on Facebook and Google+, or in trademarks, for anyone can use a hashtag without permission or payment. It’s not like a dictionary with one definition. It’s not like a word on an FCC list that prohibits or chills its use.
A hashtag is open and profoundly democratic. People gather around a hashtag. They salute it and spread it or ignore it and let it wither. They imbue it with their own meaning. The creator quickly and inevitably loses control of it.

If you don’t know what a hashtag is, you really need to start using twitter.