“This Election’s Not Going To Be Won in Hashtags”
Update: See Kevin Bondelli’s reponse, #ColinDelanyIsRight About Hashtags. And, note that the original article turned ME into a hashtag.
For an example of how the online communications ground is constantly changing under candidates’ feet, check out Adam Hochberg’s excellent Poynter article on the Republican hijacking of the #attackwatch Twitter hashtag started by the Obama campaign. The background: earlier this month, the Obamans launched Attackwatch.com, a successor site to 2008′s FightTheSmears.com that crowdsources the process of identifying and countering online critics. Unlike its earlier counterpart, Attackwatch.com has a social media component, part of which is a Twitter hashtag for supporters to use.
But of course, hashtags don’t care who types them in, and conservatives quickly jumped on #attackwatch and began using it as a platform to make fun of the President. Hashtag hijacks are nothing new (liberals and conservatives do it to each other all the time), but this one was prominent enough that it attracted media attention and led to claims that Obama has lost his online mojo (something helped by the fact that Attackwatch.com’s design is harsh on the eyes and on the campaign’s potential opponents — not exactly happy-friendly-hopey Obama ’08).
3 comments September 28th, 2011 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us
