#Hashtag activism, a voice for the voiceless

#Justbecauseitisfridayevening, #itisholidaytime, #whyilovemybestfriendsomuch. These were some of the tags an eleven-years-old girl, seated on the front seat of the car with her android phone was posting on her social profile.

Not to say that such hashtags can’t be useful, however the sentence structure of the tags had no space making it difficult to read and did not exactly match the post that had her half face selfie on it. 

In recent times, there has been a massive revamping of communicating thoughts, ideas and messages, such that the social media born concept of hashtags has become a key tool in not only popularising a post, but also has become a widespread method of protest and activism. 

Social media has given Tanzanians, especially the youth exposed to Internet, a platform to vocalise their strong opinions on politics, change and entertainment. The use of hashtags such as #WhatWouldMagufuliDo, #PanyaRoad, #HapaKaziTu, #ChangeTanzania are some of the locally created tags that began grouping people of different backgrounds to start a conversation on a topic amongst Tanzanians. 

 #Tanzania is the most visible hashtag in this country. According to the RiteTag statistics, #tanzania has eight unique tweets per hour, four re-tweets per hour and 29,442 hashtag exposure per hour. 

Social media expert and owner of a digital agency, Egfrid Mayunga believes that hashtags make information easier to find.  “It encourages social media users to explore content that interests them, brands use hashtags to reach their target audience and to help members filter information,” Egfrid explained to Success the rationale of using a hashtag.  

Hashtag campaigns that had big impact

With only 48 hours to raise money and build a classroom in Tanzania, Epic Change (a Non-governmental Organization) launched a Twitter campaign called Tweetsgiving (now known as Epic Thanks), which aimed to change the world through the power of gratitude. The project first asked Twitter users to tweet out anything they were thankful for with the hashtag #TweetsGiving. Then they asked them to donate money in honour of what they were grateful for.   

The results? Let’s just say there was a lot to be thankful for. In just two days, Epic Change raised over $11,000 to help build a classroom and support education in Tanzania. The social media campaign also brought awareness to the organisation with 98% of donors never having donated to Epic Change before. 

A hashtag movement that focused on encouraging story-sharing in order to fight stigma and take on stereotypes was the #WhyIStayed campaign. This was a campaign created by writer and domestic violence activist Beverly Gooden on September 8, 2014. Gooden started the hashtag in response to those “questioning the experiences of Janay Palmer and other survivors of domestic abuse,” following the release of a hotel surveillance video that showed Ray Rice assaulting Palmer, his then fiancé. A survivor of domestic violence herself, Gooden used #WhyIStayed to share the reasons why she remained in an abusive marriage as well as to encourage other survivors of domestic violence to share their own stories.

Beverly Gooden in an interview was quoted, “I believe in storytelling. I believe in the power of shared experience. I believe that we find strength in community. That is why I created this hashtag. I hope those tweeting using #WhyIStayed find a voice, find love, find compassion, and find hope.” 

Another noteworthy example of this distinct form of hashtag activism is #ShoutYourAbortion - a viral hashtag that emerged last September with the aim to encourage discussion and personal story-sharing on a topic that is highly stigmatized, and therefore often swept under the rug. Despite its commonness - some statistics hold that 30 per cent of women will have an abortion by the age of 45 - abortion is rarely discussed more than abstractly even amongst circles of feminists and close family and friends. With that in mind, writer Lindy West tweeted using the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion to tackle “the assumption that abortion is still something to be whispered about.” She said, “The fact that even progressive, outspoken, pro-choice feminists feel the pressure to keep our abortions under wraps - to speak about them only in corners, in murmurs, in private with our closest confidantes - means that opponents of abortion get to define it however suits them best.”

According to Jumanne Mtambalike, a technology enthusiast and innovation space manager at BuniHub, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), a lot of people in Tanzania are becoming aware of the concept and the power of the tool to address different issues as seen above. He gave Success a local perspective, “By 2015, 32 million Tanzanians had access to mobile phones and by 2014, 11.3 million people in Tanzania had access to the internet which was 21.9 per cent rise compared to 2013. The hashtag campaign can be very useful depending on how you are using it. For example, the campaign #BringBackOurGirls in Nigeria was used to address the burning issue of Boko Haram kidnapping 200 young girls. The hashtag campaign can show the collective strength of people to address a certain issue and demand a change from decision makers or agencies in control. For example you can run campaign #CleanDar to encourage people living in Dar es Salaam to embrace Dar es Salaam as a smart city and take more initiatives to make the city more clean and smart. The campaign can carry number of messages to the stakeholders involved.”

Political revolution 

According to Portland, political hashtags make up 8.67% of all hashtags across the African continent. This proportion is higher than in the US, UK, France and Canada, which is perhaps suggestive of a more politically, engaged population in Africa, or perhaps it is due to the lack of freedom of speech in certain African countries which pushes people online to express their views.

In Tanzania, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) – the ruling party – had a clear majority of hashtags. In fact, the CCM’s slogan #hapakazitu was the fifth most popular hashtag in Tanzania. Magufuli is an active Twitter user with over 117,000 followers and helped promote his party online.

Pros and cons

HashTags can drive both positive and negative political and non-political campaigns depending on who drives it. Campaigning groups will also push target audience to act accordingly if the hashtag trends.

Edwin Bruno, founder and CEO of Smart Codes, a digital agency told Success that twitter is the best platform to discuss new innovative ideas as it is a conversation based social network. “You can through an idea lock it with a #hashtag, so that twitter users can start contributing and communicating the effect of it, which will help you to gain new insights before implementing the idea. Hashtag can be used positively, for instance TOT (Tanzania on Twitter) started the trending hashtag called #ChangeTanzania, which was used to point out issues regarding youth and resulted to social media users to donate desks in different schools,” he said. 

Mr Bruno, who is also Forbes recognized digital expert further added about a case he witnessed. “Hashtags can be used negatively. Example social bullying that has once happened in Tanzania, where #TOT trend on twitter was bullying ladies about demeaning  issues of relationships, which resulted to the death of a girl (name preferred to be kept anonymous). Therefore we carefully need to choose what to discuss with our tweets and make social media a better place,” Edwin cautions.