{"id":568,"date":"2015-03-09T20:49:30","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T00:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/?p=568"},"modified":"2015-03-10T00:15:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T04:15:47","slug":"harness-the-power-of-the-hashtag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/2015\/03\/09\/harness-the-power-of-the-hashtag\/","title":{"rendered":"Harness the Power of the #Hashtag"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the third chapter of his book Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World<\/em>, Ulises Ali Mejias describes how computers function together to form a network, defined as \u201ca system of linked elements or nodes\u201d (37). Digital networks, Mejias writes, use a combination of human and machine to assume social agency through social tagging systems. The concept may seem abstract, but for anyone who uses social media such as Twitter in their daily lives, tagging works as a beautifully simple way to sort through and classify information on a particular topic.<\/p>\n

Perhaps what makes Twitter hashtags so appealing to its users is the fact that it operates as a \u201cfolksonomy\u201d with few, if any, rules for what can and can\u2019t be a hashtag. The relatively lawless nature of hashtags comes from the fact that \u201cthe negotiation of meaning during the process of classification is delegated from humans to code\u201d (50). Mejias portrays this feature as \u201cperhaps [the] greatest weakness\u201d of social tagging systems, but I argue that any inefficiencies caused by the computer regulating the system are far outweighed by their benefits.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is somewhat annoying that the same topic could take on multiple hashtags based on a misspelling or the choice to omit \u201cthe,\u201d as in the example below.<\/p>\n

\"twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

Two people tweeting about the same thing won\u2019t have their tweets sorted into the same \u201cpile\u201d because of their slightly different hashtag choice, but the inefficiency is minor and ultimately insignificant. What makes Twitter hashtags so fascinating is how they can provide a seamless link between celebrities and regular folks. When NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski\u2014who has over 500,000 followers\u2014wants to do an impromptu Q&A session with his fans, all he needs to do is harness the power of the hashtag<\/a>, and computers handle the dirty work of aggregating all the submissions for him. In my view, it\u2019s well worth a few small sacrifices in order to gain the \u201cindividual freedom and scale of access that only the internet can provide\u201d (52).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the third chapter of his book Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World, Ulises Ali Mejias describes how computers function together to form a network, defined as \u201ca system of linked elements or nodes\u201d (37). Digital networks, Mejias writes, use a combination of human and machine to assume social agency through social tagging systems. … Continue reading Harness the Power of the #Hashtag<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-1","category-readers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}