![]() ![]() 21, 2014, the day after two police officers were killed in New York City while in their patrol car. The day in which the hashtag #AllLivesMatter appeared the most during this time period was Dec. However – as was the case with #BlackLivesMatter – it was the day after the announcement that there would be no grand jury indictments in the Michael Brown case when the hashtag began appearing regularly. On the one-year anniversary of Brown’s death, August 9, 2015, the hashtag appeared 120,067 times as well as 98,518 times the following day.Īs for #AllLivesMatter, the hashtag appeared on Twitter a few times prior to the unrest in Ferguson in August 2014.13, 2015, presidential campaign debate in which Senator Bernie Sanders defended the Black Lives Matter movement and decried institutional racism spurred the hashtag to appear more than 127,000 times on Twitter the following day as many users voiced support for Sanders. 4, 2014, the day after a New York grand jury decided not to indict police officers in the death of Eric Garner, #BlackLivesMatter appeared 189,210 times – the most it was ever used in a single day. Since late 2014, #BlackLivesMatter has been a continuous presence on Twitter, but its use has increased around some specific events. During the subsequent three weeks, the hashtag was used 1.7 million times. However, the use of the hashtag increased dramatically three months later when on November 25, the day after a Ferguson grand jury decided not to indict the officer involved in Brown’s death, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag appeared 172,772 times. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag appeared an average of 58,747 times per day in the roughly three weeks following Brown’s death. 9 Despite its widespread presence today, the hashtag was slow to gain prominence: During the second half of 2013, it appeared on Twitter a total of just 5,106 times (or about 30 times a day).īoth the use of the hashtag and the influence of the broader Black Lives Matter movement accelerated greatly in August 2014 when Michael Brown, a black teenager, was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. ![]() ![]() The phrase “black lives matter” was first used by a black community organizer in a Facebook post following the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Over time, the volume of #AllLivesMatter tweets has generally moved in parallel with that of #BlackLivesMatter. That hashtag has been used a total of 1.5 million times, about one-eighth as often as #BlackLivesMatter. ![]() 8 An early timeline of the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtagsĪll told, from its initial appearance in mid-2013 through March 2016, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has appeared on Twitter almost 11.8 million times.Īs a direct response to #BlackLivesMatter, some on Twitter began using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter. As a result, the growth of the movement offline was directly linked with the online conversation. Organizers of Black Lives Matter made social media – and specifically the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter – a centerpiece of their strategy. This was the case with the Black Lives Matter movement. In mid-2014, as the issue of use of force by police gained national attention due to several high profile cases involving black men, some activists promoted hashtags as a way to identify their messages and display solidarity. While most hashtags are developed organically, some groups deliberately use hashtags to promote a message. In 2009, Twitter began to hyperlink and compile hashtags, making them searchable and increasing their utility as identifiers. Historically, hashtags developed as an informal method of highlighting ideas in unformatted text and trying to grow conversation around a topic. (A previous Pew Research Center study surveyed Americans on their awareness of and attitudes towards issues of racial equality.) These tweets (13.3 million in total) were then analyzed using Crimson Hexagon’s algorithmic tool to determine their subject matter and tone. According to Twitter, #Ferguson was the most used social-issue hashtag in the 10-year history of the platform, while #BlackLivesMatter was third.Īlong with examining tweets that mentioned race in a general sense, the Center’s analysis looked at all tweets that included the #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter hashtags from July 12, 2013, to March 31, 2016. Two of the top three were directly related to issues of race. On Twitter’s 10-year anniversary, the site published a list of the most used hashtags related to social causes. In recent years, social media have become a common way for political groups and social movements to organize. ![]()
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