While reading different tweets from each of the examples of hashtags given to us, I found #woke to be one of the more interesting ones. It is a slang word I have heard before, yet haven’t been able to fully understand. Hopefully, I will gain a good understanding of the hashtag through the tweets of people around the world. I feel like it is such a broad hashtag interpreted so many ways that it can be used differently in every tweet. This hashtag is applicable to a wide variety of topics, so I hope to discover more about different current events and see how people are using #woke to display their thoughts. I am interested in this hashtag because it provides tweets from a range of current events, and also gives insight on the style of how people talk about issues.
As expected, I received a huge archive of data regarding plenty of different topics. In the past three days there have been 1773 tweets with the hashtag #woke. At quick glance, I saw numerous tweets about politics, most of them accompanied by Trump’s name. Other common topics were Black History Month and climate change. Also as expected, I saw a lot of satirical tweets using the hashtag to, from what it appears, mock society who use the term more seriously. What I was surprised to find, however, was the lack of tweets from famous/influential people. It seems like the population tweeting with #woke are average people of society, using the term as a platform to voice their opinions. Some of these are more casual, others with greater intentions to make a point about a current issue. At this stage in my research, I found it important to figure out what the hashtag really means. In line with what I expected, it can be used in a lot of different ways, but there were a few interpretations from tweets in the archive: ‘RT @bj116: “Let’s be clear: Being #woke means looking out for the good of others, not using new information to look good in front of others.”‘ Another interpretation from @The_Gas_Way who tweeted, “My few of some things are changing every day. Good thing about living is learning #woke”. It’s becoming more and more clear that this hashtag is in line with awareness of society, and self-awareness as well. It is amazing to see tweets on so many different topics under one hashtag.
When searching for news about my hashtag from the past week, only two articles were found. One was regarding female body image and how there is a push to bring back the idea of the female body in terms of an art, the other article being about how the ongoing issue with Uber continuing service during a taxi strike is helping another transportation company run by African Americans. I then searched my hashtag topic, social awareness. Here, I got plenty of articles, all with similar concepts to the first two. All four articles introduce topics that need social awareness, which was expected. I did choose the article from The Hindu primarily because I feel like that is something that wouldn’t come up under the hashtag, but only the hashtag topic. Reading through tweets with #woke, I noticed the majority were from people living in America. It gives me the idea that this is a national term, something Americans have created to express themselves; however, social awareness is very international.
Now, looking at articles from the year 2006, I would expect to get similar results to what I found with my hashtag topic today. Regardless of what the current events were, #woke would have been applicable to any time period. It is fascinating, however, to see that some of the current issues were present 11 years ago. The first article I read was about Katrina actually not providing awareness for impoverished communities. The second article is interesting because it mentions how art can be used as a platform to spread awareness. Again, something that isn’t surprising to me because no matter how far in the past you look, there has always been a need for social awareness.
After collecting data through TAGS, I do feel like I am both collecting data and connecting to the actual livelihood of a wide range of issues. The two great qualities of the hashtag #woke are that it is used primarily by average Americans, similar to myself, and it brings different issues to my attention, rather than just a single one. I feel that through scraping, like mentioned in the reading, we are able to discover information about both specific topics and society in general. The way people talk about things is critical to understanding communities. With my hashtag in particular, I am going to be able to stay on top of a lot of current events from the perspective of people around the country, which is pretty amazing.
Works Cited:
Duggan, Elaine. 2017. “Female Bodies Explored”, February 3. Evening Echo. http://www.eveningecho.ie/wow/female-bodies-explored/2621856/
Joseph, Delinda. 2017. “#DeleteUber Has Been Great for Moovn, a Black-Owned Ride-Sharing App”, February 2. UPROXX. http://uproxx.com/realtalk/moovn-black-owned-uber-alternative/
Norlander, Matt. 2017. “Why One College Basketball Coach Keeps Fighting to Spread Autism Awareness”, February 3. CBS Sports. http://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/why-one-college-basketball-coach-keeps-fighting-to-spread-autism-awareness/
Murthy, Neeraja. 2017. “A Platform to Reach Out”, February 3. The Hindu. http://www.thehindu.com/society/A-platform-to-reach-out/article17175504.ece
Trei, Lisa. 2006. “Katrina Did Not Raise Awareness of Poverty, study finds”, March 8. Stanford News. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/march8/katrina-030806.html
Wolf, Matt. 2006. “Rachel Corrie in London: Requiem for an Idealist”, March 31. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/theater/reviews/rachel-corrie-in-london-requiem-for-an-idealist.html
Marres, Noortje, and Esther Weltevrede. 2013. “Scraping the Social?” Journal of Cultural Economy 6 (3): 313–35.
I think your discovery about the use of the hashtag in the news is particularly interesting—there is obviously a divide between its power to generate conversation on Twitter and spark interest in the news. I was also surprised to hear that the hashtag was in use ten years ago. It seems to me like its use has evolved somewhat since then, from covering particular events to larger issues. I would be curious to see over the course of the semester if the hashtag is still used to highlight events, or if its use has shifted completely. I also wonder if the hashtag will follow other developing social issues, or perhaps even predicate their presence in the media.
I appreciate your observation that fewer famous than common people are using #woke. I did not think to look for that in my tweets. Since our society is clearly media driven, it valuable to track what public faces are saying. As we progress throughout this course, you may want to look deeper into where in the US people are using #woke. Perhaps you can compare locations in the US to the geopolitical maps available online. I am interested to see how frequently #woke and #BlackLivesMatter are used in the same tweets. At least in the US, both hashtags seem to be used to express thoughts around similar social injustices (i.e. oppression of people of color).