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#BlackLivesMatter
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international Black Lives Matter is an activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people. It began in 2013 around the time of the Trayvon Martin shooting. #BlackLivesMatter has been used in many forms of social media and is still being used today. The use increases following violent racist acts that may become a trending news topic. -
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, is the dumping of a bucket of ice and water over a person's head to promote awareness of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and encourage donations to research. This became very popular in June and July of 2014. While it may not be political, it disrupted the status quo by using social media (YouTube, Facebook and Instagram) and "viral" entertainment as a springboard to aid in donations for a disease that, at the time, received very little attention. -
#JeSuisCharlie
JeSuisCharlie is a slogan and logo created by French art director Joachim Roncin. It was adopted by supporters of freedom of speech and freedom of the press after the 7 January 2015 shooting in which twelve people were killed at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The hashtag trended world wide and took on the meaning of supporting others in tragedy as well as pointing out issues of censorship and freedom.. Twitter was the major use of this hashtag. -
#Maga
"Make America Great Again" or MAGA is a campaign slogan used in American politics that was popularized by Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential campaign. This slogan had an enormous social media following via Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets. While President Obama utilized social media to connect with a younger generation, Trump was able to use it to unite his supporters. Regardless of what you think of his politics his campaign using #Maga was very effective. -
#MeToo
MeToo is a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The movement began to spread virally in October 2017 through twitter, facebook instagram and youtube as a hashtag on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace. Everyone who had an experience or knew of someone who did was encouraged to share that experience to create a safe space for people to confront these issues.
