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Media and Communication, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, Pages 13-17 13
Media and Communication (ISSN: 2183-2439)
2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, Pages 13-17
doi: 10.17645/mac.v4i4.692
Commentary
Narrative Agency in Hashtag Activism: The Case of #BlackLivesMatter
Guobin Yang
1,2
1
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA;
E-Mail: guobin.yang@asc.upenn.edu
2
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Submitted: 27 February 2106 | Accepted: 25 March 2016 | Published: 11 August 2016
Abstract
Hashtag activism happens when large numbers of postings appear on social media under a common hashtagged word,
phrase or sentence with a social or political claim. The temporal unfolding of these mutually connected postings in
networked spaces gives them a narrative form and agency. Applying Karlyn Campbell’s propositions about rhetorical
agency to the case of #BlackLivesMatter, this essay shows that narrative agency in hashtag activism derives from its
narrative form as well as from its contents and social context. Narrative agency is communal, invented, skillful, and
protean.
Keywords
#BlackLivesMatter; agency; hashtag activism; narrative
Issue
This commentary is part of the issue “Political Agency in the Digital Age: Media, Participation and Democracy”, edited
by Anne Kaun (Södertörn University, Sweden), Maria Kyriakidou (University of East Anglia, UK) and Julie Uldam
(Roskilde University, Denmark).
© 2016 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
One of the most interesting developments in digital ac-
tivism in recent years is the rise of hashtag activism,
meaning discursive protest on social media united
through a hashtagged word, phrase or sentence.
#BlackLivesMatter, for example, was a protest move-
ment that happened both in the streets and on social
media in response to the acquittal of George Zimmer-
man in July 2013 in the shooting death of African-
American teen Trayvon Martin. Another example is
#Ferguson, which happened in response to the shoot-
ing to death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 by a
police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Within the first
week of Brown’s death, millions of posts with the
hashtagged #Ferguson appeared on Twitter alone
(Bonila & Rosa, 2015).
These important cases of online protest brought
renewed attention to the power of digital activism in
shaping public discourse. Research on digital activism
has focused on its networked and connective character
(Bennett & Segerberg, 2013) and debated about the
question of organization and leadership (Gerbaudo,
2012). This essay argues that a neglected form of agen-
cy in the study of digital activism is its narrative form.
2. The Narrative Analysis of Social Movements
Narrative forms are an essential element of human ex-
istence (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1). Scholars have argued
that “the nature of daily action and self-construction
lends an essentially narrative character to life” (Steinmetz,
1992, p.496). Carr, for example, claims that “Narrative is
not merely a possibly successful way of describing
events; its structure inheres in the events themselves”
(1986, p. 117). Bruner (2004, p. 708) similarly states that
“a life as led is inseparable from a life as told.”
The most distinct feature of the narrative form is its
temporal sequence. In literary representations, narra-
tive form accounts for the progression from beginning
through middle to an end. Thus Kenneth Burke states
that a literary work has form “in so far as one part of it
leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be grati-
fied by the sequence" (1968, p. 124). The form of de-
Media and Communication, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, Pages 13-17 14
tective fiction, for example, often centers on a quest,
adventure, or mystery. As the protagonist (the detec-
tive) goes in search of solutions, the plot generates cu-
riosity, surprise, and suspense (Sternberg, 2003).
Like works of literature, social movements have
narrative forms. In his study of working-class for-
mation, sociologist Steinmetz notes that “Narrative thus
has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the move-
ment toward the end is accounted for by conflicts, caus-
al explanations, and the sequence of events” (Steinmetz,
1992, p. 497). Focusing on the rhetorical form of social
movements, Griffin (1952, 1969, 2003) and Cathcart
(1978) underscore the processual nature of social
movements. Cathcart (1978, p. 234) argues that move-
ments are “a kind of ritual conflict whose most distin-
guishing form is confrontation.” Griffin (1969, p. 461)
maintains that all social movements have forms: “Every
movement…has form….It is a progression…from suffer-
ing, misfortune, passive condition, state of mind.”
Social movement scholars have long recognized the
power of narratives (Polletta, 2006; Selbin, 2010), but
the question of narrative agency has received relatively
little attention in studies of digital activism (but see
Clark, 2016; Kaun, 2015). In contrast to “traditional”
forms of digital activism such as distributed denial-of-
service actions (DDoS) or signing online petitions,
hashtag activism has a distinctly narrative character. An
incidence of hashtag activism takes place when large
numbers of comments and retweets appear on social
media in response to a hashtagged word, phrase, or
sentence. Because these comments and retweets con-
sist of numerous personal stories and appear in tem-
poral order, they assume a narrative form. Narrative
agency is thus central to hashtag activism.
Rhetorical theorist Karlyn Campbell defines rhetori-
cal agency as “the capacity to act, that is, to have the
competence to speak or write in a way that will be rec-
ognized or heeded by others in one’s community”
(Campbell, 2005, p. 3). Adapting this definition, I con-
sider narrative agency in hashtag activism as the capac-
ity to create stories on social media by using hashtags
in a way that is collective and recognized by the public.
Illustrated with an analysis of a historical text (a speech
allegedly delivered by Sojourner Truth at the 1851
woman’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio), Campbell’s
five propositions about rhetorical agency are useful for
analyzing narrative agency in hashtag activism.
First, she argues that “agency is communal, social,
cooperative, and participatory and, simultaneously,
constituted and constrained by the material and sym-
bolic elements of context and culture” (p. 3). Second,
agency is both “invented” and invention. Because au-
thors and rhetors “are materially limited, linguistically
constrained, historically situated subjects” (p. 5), they
have to find and invent ways of expression. Agency is
thus invention. Third, agency emerges in artistry or
craft. It is a set of heuristic skills and includes “strata-
gem, flair, subtlety, and the like as well as the habits of
mind learned through practice” (p. 7)
Fourth, agency is achieved through form. The agen-
cy of form is realized through generic conventions and
textual and rhetorical devices. Narrative forms have
agency because they “invite” audiences, readers or lis-
teners to participate in the co-production of stories (al-
so see Polletta, 2006). As Campbell puts it, “Textual
agency is linked to audiences and begins with the signals
that guide the process of “uptake” for readers or listen-
ers enabling them to categorize, to understand how a
symbolic act is to be framed” (Campbell, 2005, p. 7).
Fifth, Campbell warns that “agency can be malign,
divisive, and destructive” (2005, p. 7). It is “protean,
ambiguous, open to reversal” (p. 1). The openness of
the narrative form makes it susceptible to perversion.
Below, I will discuss each of these five propositions
as they are applied to the analysis of #BlackLivesMat-
ter. One modification I will make to Campbell’s frame-
work is that I consider form as the most fundamental
feature of the narrative agency of digital activism and
will discuss it first.
3. The Power of Narrative Form
Digital activism on social media has different narrative
forms because narrative conventions may differ from
platform to platform. Earlier digital protests, for exam-
ple, took place in electronic bulletin boards or news-
groups (Gurak, 1999), which allowed the posting and
cross-positing of longer narratives. The wide circulation
of several such narratives could create an online pro-
test event, but the number of participating voices may
be significantly more limited than on Twitter. A unique
feature of hashtag activism on Twitter is that it starts,
well, with a hashtag. Adding the hashtag sign # to a
word, such as #change or #climate, makes it easier for
other users on Twitter to search, link, and interact with
one another via the hashtagged word and to share sto-
ries related to it. Indeed, such hashtags are a common
practice on Twitter. They are routine hashtags.
These everyday hashtags, however, do not usually
evolve into contentious collective events online. The
most influential cases of hashtag activism, as opposed
to routine hashtags, have a recognizable narrative form
with a beginning, a crisis/conflict, and an end (Clark,
2016). Within this temporal framework, individuals con-
tribute to the co-production of narratives by hashtagging
their personal thoughts, emotions, and stories.
The hashtags in many influential cases of hashtag ac-
tivism have complete sentence structures rather than
single words like #change. The following is a random list
of examples: #BlackLivesMatter, #BringBackOurGirls,
#StopGamerGate, #WhyIStayed, #JeNeSuisPasCharlie,
#OccupyEverywhere, #CancelColbert, #ThisIsACoup,
#IcantBreathe, #MuslimsAreNotTerrorist.
As the above examples show, these hashtags con-
Media and Communication, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, Pages 13-17 15
tain verbs expressing a strong sense of action and
force. The actions are petitioning, demanding, appeal-
ing, and protesting. They express refusals, objections,
and imperatives to take immediate action. They often
challenge narratives in mainstream media. In all these
ways, activist hashtags embody what Cathcart (1978, p.
234), in his rhetorical study of social movement forms,
refers to as “a kind of ritual conflict whose most distin-
guishing form is confrontation.”
The narrative forms of hashtag activism are not lim-
ited to the syntactical structures of the hashtags. They
also consist of the generic conventions and rhetorical
devices used in the hashtagged postings. An incidence
of hashtag activism typically spans days, weeks, and
even months. During this period, textual signals and
rhetorical devices “guide the process of ‘uptake’ for
readers or listeners enabling them to categorize, to
understand how a symbolic act is to be framed.”
(Campbell, 2005, p.7) They encourage audience partic-
ipation. People participate by reading, retweeting,
commenting on others’ tweets or posting their own
with the same hashtag. The temporal unfolding of such
an incident is a process of people interacting with one
another and collectively creating a larger narrative. To
understand the narrative agency in this process, I will
now turn to the other four dimensions of narrative
agency as outlined by Karlyn Campbell and use the ex-
ample of #BlackLivesMatter as an illustration.
4. Communal, Invented, Skillful, and Protean
According to a USA Today story (Guynn, 2015), the
statement “Black lives matter” initially appeared in a
Facebook post by Alicia Garza in July 2013 after Garza
saw from television news the acquittal of George Zim-
merman in the shooting death of African-American
teen Trayvon Martin. Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors
added the hashtag sign to the statement after she read
it. The rest is history. #BlackLivesMatter quickly spread
on social media and spawned not only an online pro-
test event, but also a social movement organization
headed by none other than Garza and Cullors.
At 8:45am Eastern Time on February 25, 2016, I
searched the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag using my per-
sonal Twitter account. As I scrolled down the screen,
the results expanded. I saved a 74-page pdf document
of the search results. These 74 pages are only a small
slice of the much longer temporality of the #Black-
LivesMatter, but still show clearly #BlackLivesMatter as
a case of narrative agency.
My Twitter’s search results are shown in reverse
chronological order, with the most recent postings at
the top. The 74-page document is thus a narrative in
reverse chronological order. My experience of reading
it was like reading a live narrative about an unfolding
event, one that is at the same time created by the nar-
rative form.
At the top of the search results was a HuffPost Poli-
tics story showing a photograph of Hillary Clinton mak-
ing a speech. The title of the story is “Black Lives Matter
Activists Interrupt Hillary Clinton At Private Event In South
Carolina: They wanted her to account for some of her
past statements on racial justice.” As I scroll down the
results, I begin to see the key aspects of narrative
agency at work.
First, the communal and participatory feature of
agency is evident from the many likes and retweets of
individual postings. Some postings have hundreds of
“favorites” and “retweets.” Individuals in these com-
munal spaces may or may not know one another.
They are like dramatic personae in what Campbell re-
fers to, citing Sartre, as “a serial relationship”: “Indi-
viduals in a serial relationship have no set of attrib-
utes in common except their shared relationship to an
external object, event, or, in other cases, to a law, an
institution, a norm, a stereotype and so on.” (Camp-
bell, 2005, p. 4) In this case, since they all tweeted
with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, their relationship
is primarily to the hashtag with all its moral, political,
and social implications.
As I read on, the story grows, expands, and be-
comes richer and more complex. Texts are mixed with
photos. One hashtag is used in combination with anoth-
er, such that #BlackLivesMatter becomes intertwined
with multiple other hashtags. Again, in reverse chrono-
logical order, I saw the following hashtags used together
with #BlackLivesMatter: #blackish, #WhichHillary, #no-
tasuperpredator, #ChicagoPD, #alwaysshavealwayswill,
#Apple, #FeeltheBern, #Trump, #abff, #blacktwitter,
#OscaSoWhite, and so on and so forth. Each of these
hashtags tells a new story, but all are linked to #Black-
LivesMatter. #BlackLivesMatter becomes a unifying
theme of multiple stories about racial justice.
Second, Campbell writes that agency is invention
and authors and rhetors are “inventors” in the rhetorical
sense. They “link past and present, and find means to
express those strata that connect the psyche, society,
and world, the forms of feeling that encapsulate mo-
ments in time” (p. 5). This process of invention depends
on artistry, craft, stratagem, flair, subtlety, and skill.
#BlackLivesMatter is the result of such a process of
skillful invention. In a simple sense, all Twitter postings
have to have some degree of artistry in order to meet
the 140-character exigency of the Twitter platform. To
create a collective story of struggles for racial justice,
such as through #BlackLivesMatter, requires individual
users to mobilize additional artistry and flair. One par-
ticularly powerful method is the sharing of personal
stories. For example, one posting on February 22 goes:
“In 2015, dozens of African American’s [sic] were killed
by police. I put 84 of their names on my shirt. #Black-
LivesMatter pic.twitter.com/c0H0ltrgE0.” Such person-
al stories are linked to broader social issues and shared
with the public through the use of the hashtag, thus