The Power of Hashtag Activism and How It Can Help The #TimesUp Movement
Written by Kaithleen Apostol | March 14, 2018
SAN DIEGO, Calif — It’s award show season! Celebrities are all coming together to celebrate some of Hollywood’s finest talent. These tightly orchestrated award shows are known to feature the most outrageous outfits, red carpet walks, and speeches. Unlike the usual bizarre outfits from Lady Gaga, cheesy jokes from tipsy celebrities, and extravagant performances from highly-recognized music artists, awards season this year is ringing a more serious tone. On January 7, a parade of black dresses made it on the red carpet. Actresses strolled down the red carpet wearing long, black gowns to take a stance against sexual harassment. Organized by over 300 renowned Hollywood actresses, the Golden Globes was the launch of #TimesUp, a movement and organization dedicated to attaining justice to those who have been sexually harassed in the workplace.
What once started out as the small-scale #MeToo movement, evolved into a nationwide stance, uniting women from all industries. Years before the Golden Globes and the news of the Harvey Weinstein sexual harrassment case, the #MeToo movement was started by activist Tarana Burke after founding Just Be, a non-profit that works to provide resources to sexual harassment and assault victims in 2007. Fast forward to late 2017, #MeToo found its way on the Internet after actress Alyssa Milano reacted to sexual allegations towards Harvey Weinstein, a prominent Hollywood film producer. Milano went to Twitter, encouraging women to speak up about their experiences. This motivated fellow Hollywood actresses to use social media as a brave space for them to share their survival stories. Series of tweets started to surface with actresses outting A-list celebrities in the industry for sexual misconduct, filing several lawsuits against them. More and more women from across the nation started to participate in this social media action, showing their solidarity to the movement. Thus, the #TimesUp movement was born.
As illustrated on their website, timesupnow.com, #TimesUp aims to give legal support to those who have experienced harassment, abuse, and discrimination. It is an initiative started by influential figures in Hollywood, hoping to join together with women from all over the nation to end gender inequality and shed light on the ongoing cruel, inappropriate sexual harassment in the industry. Partnering with social justice advocates and legislative leaders from the National Women’s Law Center, Time’s Up has started a legal defense fund committed to giving resources to victims. As stated in Los Angeles Magazine, #TimesUp has also launched projects with the Commission of Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace and 50/50 by 2020 to stand by gender equality, fighting to improve workplace laws that have been challenging the rights of women for far too long. #TimesUp hopes to acknowledge the trauma survivors have had to face, giving them the support they need to rise above what they endured. The movement continues to grow, bringing on more supporters worldwide — thanks to social media.
This movement is not the first to spring up from social media. Nick Heimann, a local student activist, believes that hashtag activism has allowed him to stay aware of different causes and movements he can support. “Social media is important in spreading awareness for a simple hashtag can reach millions of people that can actually speak up and fight for change.”
Activists have looked to social media as an easy way to kick start their protests and get an issue spreading around. With the Internet having the ability to quickly share messages anywhere around the world, social media has been utilized to have social movements go viral. In particular a form of activism has arise due to the popularity of social media — hashtag activism. Hashtag activism is defined as the use of digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, to advocate against or for social causes.
As stated on reuters.com, the term was first brought up in 2011 during the time of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations for activists used their online platforms to rally people together. Since then, hashtag activism has evolved into creating general awareness of issues and communities of activists. It encourages people to participate in social change by showing their support through likes, retweets, and shares, all through the touch of their phones.
How can this help with the #TimesUp Movement? Hashtag activism can help gain the attention of wide spread audiences who may feel motivated to take part in the action. By sharing relatable, engaging content on social media platforms, #TimesUp can gain recognition and inspire more change. With the accessibility of social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, audiences can get updates about the movement anytime, anywhere. Small campaigns in the past have expanded into huge, global social movements due to hashtag activism bringing masses of people together. In particular, the #TimesUp movement has grew tremendously since its launch.
Marianne Delatorre, a social justice educator at the Cross Cultural Center at UC San Diego, actively shares her opinions on social media, believing that hashtag activism has the potential to change the way people view demonstrations and social change.
“I think it’s impactful because it grabs attention of a cause. Activism comes in different forms and hashtag activism is legitimate in its organizing. Talk is necessary to start action. Hashtag activism creates that conversation,” Ms. Delatorre said.
However, Louis Morales, the social awareness coordinator of Kaibigang Pilipin@, UC San Diego’s all-inclusive Pilipin@ organization, is skeptical of the true power of hashtag activism, thinking that this form of protest may not be as effective for getting crowds to actively participate.
“Social media protest is easily the most accessible form of protest, such as for disabled folx or people without the resources to go to a physical protest,” he said, “yet, it can lead to lots of performative acts of activism, that don’t really do anything. Simply retweeting a post or changing your profile picture does not do much.”
On the social media side of it, Andy Tran, a blogger and public relations strategist, believes that activists need hashtag activism in order to create a more coherent image of their movements, further helping with the development of other forms of protests.
“I think it’s useful and allows people to unite for causes together,” he said, “we do have to be mindful though that hashtag activism is only one way to spread the message and though it does have a large reach, it should be combined with other forms of communication such as local events and gatherings.”
Social movements have been springing up for centuries. With the changing times, activism continues to adapt to new forms of technology. For the #TimesUp movement, hashtag activism can help them reach audiences that they need to target. Hashtag activism has the power to create important conversations about issues that are needed to shed light upon. Because of it, the #TimesUp movement has propelled the open discussion of anti-harassment, encouraging people to deconstruct systems of power, “so that all people can live free from sexual harassment and violence.”
