#HashTagExercise

Many social media sites allow users to post texts containing hashtags --- words or phrases with spaces deleted, preceded by the character #. The web site's software usually automatically converts hastags into hyperlinks to pages containing other posts containing the same hashtag, sometimes with other information of possible interest to the authors and readers of such posts.

Social Media sites support tags to simplify search, filtering, and access to the constant stream of new posts, and to make it possible for the site owners to monitor trends automatically (i.e. by identifying tags that abruptly become much more common). This requires the general cooperation of users, who must be willing to use tags in their posts --- preferably, tags that are consistent with the conventions that other users follow.

The assignment:

1. Find an example of a tag (such as #MAGA, #MeToo, or #FakeNews) or a small group of thematically related tags (such as #WhyILaughed / #WhyICried) that trended on some social medium within the last year.

2. Explain the conventions that users of that hashtag followed in their posts.

3. Describe how the use of the hashtag enriched or impoverished the exchange of ideas for the people who used it. Provide examples.

Feel free to cite published accounts of the tag's progress, but I think you will learn more about the effects of tagging by examining actual posts that contain the tag, and reflecting upon the values and beliefs of their authors.

You might imagine a distinction between subject tags, which are commonly used for searching and filtering but often lack the # character, and hashtags, which often express irony or mockery. Are sarcastic and ironic hashtags as useful as search keywords and are they equally as relevant for the exchange of ideas? If you are more familiar with this meta use of hashtags, I suggest that you try the assignment as outlined above, using a mocking or ironic hashtag as your example.

An appropriate length for this exercise would be 2-3 pages. Please bring a printed paper copy, due at the beginning of class on August 25th.