Student Fellows Research Social Justice Hashtags

Maxwell students Andrea Constant and Abigail Tick are taking part in a research project called “The Social Justice #Hashtag Project: A Digital Humanities Study,” led by Casarae Abdul-Ghani, assistant professor of African American studies.

Constant, a sociology graduate student, is studying the hashtag #SayHerName. She has conducted an extensive literature review of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as a review of literature focused on the #SayHerName hashtag and the history of Black-led social movements in the United States. She has also researched the criminalization of Black girls and women in the U.S. Her analysis showed an increase in the usage of #SayHerName following the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black 26-year-old EMT who was shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.

“Since I began collecting this data, I’ve seen the themes and the narratives switch, depending on who is tweeting,” she says. “For example, in the tweets following Breonna Taylor’s killing, people are pleading for justice for her death and for other Black women. I’ve seen people using the hashtag to highlight the deaths of Black trans women too.”

Tick, a sociology and citizenship and civic engagement major, selected the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport, a platform for survivors of sexual violence to disclose the reasons they chose not to officially report their experience.

She says the hashtag is a way to build a community for survivors, but it also works to destigmatize the language used to talk about rape and other forms of sexual violence. “Social media is a crucial space for victims to generate dialogue as well as find resources. I’m interested in looking at that bridge for victims of sexual violence,” she says.

Constant and Tick are part of a larger group of student researchers working under the direction of Abdul-Ghani, who received a fellowship for the project through the Lender Center for Social Justice housed in the School of Education.