Category: Articles

Every now and then, our favourite sites go down. Completely off the grid. And when they do, we lose it. We hop on Slack and ask our colleagues if they’re experiencing it too. Just to confirm, for sure, that Facebook is down, we might even step outside our office to check that’s it not just us, that we’re not losing our minds. Of course, by today’s standards, we’re not losing our minds. It’s completely natural for us to have a casual freak out when the Internet breaks. For better or for worse, we’re hooked. And why not? There’s literally a world of information, distraction, and entertainment available to us at a swipe of a finger or a click of a button. It’s empowering to know that whenever we need an answer to something—anything— we can whip out our smartphone and find it, pretty much instantly. We do it so much and at such high frequencies that the moment the Internet is down for a minute, we’re completely thrown for a loop. We panic. We get frustrated. We seek confirmation. And if it progresses beyond 5 minutes, we look at our screens with a blank stare, waiting – waiting for it to come back on so we can get our daily fix of our friends’ photos, see how our stocks are performing, and read the latest celebrity gossip rags. The Internet puts us in control; when we don’t have it, we’re at a loss.

It’s a luxury, and it’s one we take for granted. In too many countries, however, this feeling of being out of control or disconnected from the rest of the world is a regular occurrence. I’m not talking about remote places with bad connectivity (I’ll save that for another day). I’m talking about geographically accessible countries where governments use every tool at their disposal to throttle access to the Internet. I was recently reminded of this reality when I participated in the Munk School of Global Affairs’ Digital Public Square (DPS), which brings together leading digital experts to help address sociopolitical crises around the world. DPS tackles these challenges because, increasingly, people turn to digital platforms to express opposition or support for their government and policies, engage in online discussions about their country’s future, and self-organize around sociopolitical challenges.

This week, we highlight one of these stories on the Political Traction podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend it. My colleague Allie McHugh walks us through the fledging YouStink.org citizen movement in Lebanon that is using digital technology to call for change because of a problem most of us in Canada consider routine : garbage collection. It’s a fascinating story, and one that showcases how powerful the Internet can be. These activists are using it to rally people around a common cause, and mobilizing these people to take real-world action. This is a major crisis for Lebanon, and activists are using digital platforms in smart ways to reach people and circumvent repression through mobile apps that let people communicate, even when the government tries to limit connectivity and shut down the Internet. Unfortunately, the ability to self-organize, even if it’s under difficult circumstances like in Lebanon, isn’t an option in too many places.

In countries like Iran, North Korea, and Russia, people face significant barriers to civic engagement, both in the public and digital space. The simple right to express one’s own opinions, exchange ideas, and talk openly about the future of the country is denied. No venues exist to facilitate these conversations. Repressive regimes recognize the inherent capacity the Internet has to empower people. So, these regimes do what all brutal regimes before them have done: they actively monitor, filter, and block content to deny people the ability to share dissenting opinions and debate issues. Their targets—their citizens—are unable to create spaces for expression or institutions and policies that represent their interests. They deny them any semblance of control over the national dialogue, and replace it with repression, censorship, and exclusion.

The Digital Public Square is helping open up this dialogue back up. This crackpot unit (and I use this term affectionately—these guys do amazing work) is building new platforms to create safe digital spaces for people in repressed countries to freely exchange ideas, participate in open political discussion, and engage fellow citizens.

Those who know me well know I’m partial to the work DPS does. I helped initiate this project when I worked for Foreign Minister Baird.. In partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs, we established platforms and tools that reached 4.5 million unique people inside Iran. On the heels of this success, we announced the government would provide an additional $9 million for the DPS project. It was a no-brainer — few initiatives use the power of digital technology in a way that brings people together to provide an outlet to express dissent against repressive regimes.

Because so much of our free time is spent exploring the Internet, we tend to forget how much of an impact it can have. We use it for fun – so sometimes we forgot the importance of its function. Today, only about 40% of the world has an internet connection. Furthermore, almost 75% of Internet users are from the top 20 countries, the other 25% is spread out over 178 countries that represent less than 1% of the global total. Plus, for many of those with Internet, that connection comes with a number of conditions.

Most of us take the Internet for granted the same way we take garbage college for granted: we assume it’s a standard part of the basic infrastructure we are awarded in our society. Although I worked on the initiative in the first place, revisiting DPS humbled me all over again. It was a reminder that my Internet worries extend, at most, to a few hours without email. A lot of our online expression is wrapped up in Facebook statuses, tweets, and…a (perhaps slightly preachy) blog post. But I don’t know how else to say it — a lot of people don’t have this tool at their disposal, so it isn’t a missed email or not being able to Google a fact that puts them at a loss; it’s a much more frustrating fact. There is literally a world of information, distraction, and entertainment available, but only a small portion of us actually have it at the swipe of a finger or a click of a button. For us, limited connectivity is often a break from being constantly in contact. For others, it’s a break of a much different kind, that extends well beyond an instant message or five minute YouTube video and right into their governing infrastructure and an entirely different perspective on what’s ‘standard.”

We still talk about the Internet like it’s new. We talk about ‘breaking the Internet’ with a viral trend, about not understanding the Internet, about being confused, baffled, and floored by new things on the Internet. We anthropomorphize it — ‘the Internet’s favourite thing,’ ‘the Internet loves [insert topic].’This is partly because the Internet is always new — there are always new elements to the Internet and even the way we go about getting to the Internet is constantly changing. From creaky old Netscape Navigator, to Internet Explorer, to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, — the Internet is defined by its variability and unwillingness to grow up.

But, the Internet isn’t new. Although academia has been using the World Wide Web since the 1980s, 1995 is the generally agreed-upon date for the inception of the global communications and Google-deep-dive repository of information that we know today. It’s 21-years-old. It’s a junior in college. It can drink anywhere in the world. It’s no longer in its infancy, but like anyone in their early twenties, the process to get to this age and the ongoing maturation of its systems and users, has gone — and will continue to go — through some growing pains.

As a global communications tool, how the Internet functions dictates content and form, and also reflects its users and people who contribute to that content. The vast majority of people who are contributing in organic ways are the ones who went through their growing pains right along with the burgeoning World Wide Web, and you can tell. At the moment, a lot of Internet culture has given way to nostalgia: lists of the 30 toys you forgot, how to tell if you’re a 90s kid, and much of that nostalgia is for old Internet platforms themselves. For example, the Wayback Machine is a catalogue of old sites that no longer (actively) exist on the Internet. Through the Wayback machine, however, you can visit your favourite defunct site and experience a wave of nostalgia that only visiting someone’s old GeoCities page can bring.

This is pretty understandable, seeing as there is a certain age demographic that experienced their first crushes and demonstrations of public affection through screen names created from maudlin lyrics; who first got up the courage to speak to that object of affection via instant messenger, whether ICQ (which, fun fact, is Internet parlance for ‘I Seek You’), AOL, or MSN; who expressed their overwrought feelings in LiveJournal posts; and who portrayed their essential teen selves through their favourite bands on MySpace pages. In short, they created themselves online through a variety of mediums — a ~*~**username**~*~here, a favourite quote and winky-face there. Liking a certain page aligns you with a particular celebrity or cause, and #tbt (throwback Thursday) and #flashbackfriday are more current examples of such identity building and nostalgia, as people who use these hashtags tend to post childhood or family photos.

For those not of the millennial age, most of online identity discovery took a more anxious form. Fretting over credit card fraud, online security issues, revealing your full name — while these all seem outdated, they were once very real concerns, when users across the world connected via their creaky dial-up, only to be kicked offline moments later by an incoming fax of their baby cousin’s drawing, sent by their aunt from ‘up north.’ There was a real anxiety about exposing yourself online to strangers, lest they snatch away critical details of your life. Usernames, depending on your age, were created as much to protect identity from the shadowy depths of the net as they were to project it. But once one member of a group folded and started using their full and real name in things like email and eBay, the rest followed. For those over a certain age, a large part of becoming comfortable on the Internet was seeing people who were ‘just like you’ do the same thing.

In short, people have spent, and continue to spend, a lot of time figuring out who they are on the Internet, developing their personalities, their communications style and form, and telling everyone — whether directly or indirectly — all of the things they do and do not like. And yet, we still have a tendency to ignore much of it as throwaway bits of fluff, and pretend that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or even OkCupid and Tinder, represent nothing more than superficial forays into online culture that are divorced from anything of consequence.

Things of consequence, like, for example, the fact that for better or worse, people are more responsive to content in which they see themselves reflected back.

In 2009, OKCupid conducted a study — and then refreshed that study with new data in 2014 — that found race affects who messages back on the popular dating site. The study demonstrated society’s racial biases and a tendency for most groups to match with members of their own race, or to discriminate against certain races. Similarly, in an informal, but extensive, experiment, one journalist found that that people on Tinder tend to swipe right (match with someone) if they are in the same socioeconomic bracket, or seem to belong to a desirable class — something that people are incredibly good at predicting — or projecting — from only a few photos and some biographical information. Another breakdown of online dating from FiveThirtyEight found that users on eHarmony were clearly searching for someone like themselves. There was an obvious pattern between similar traits and whom people chose to message on the site.

Numerous studies worry about the superficiality and possible corrosion of human interaction from such dating sites (the studies on whether or not that is true are still very mixed), they provide a wealth of information into people’s online actions, translated into real-life action. There are few other sources that so clearly represent someone’s identity that can draw as direct a line between online behavior and real-life decisions as these dating tools. With each passing year that the Internet ages, the need to separate our ‘online’ personalities from our ‘actual’ personalities gets whittled down a little more as these behaviours flow freely between our internet worlds and our actual worlds. Purchases are made online, activism starts online and moves to the outside world, people meet potential partners by curating a profile page that represents themselves. Identity building online is real — from your childhood Neopets to your Facebook profile, to your Tinder bio — and whether good or bad, the fact that we are seeking out similar faces and people is a reality.

While studies suggesting we are all a little more biased or prejudiced than we would like to believe can be horribly depressing, there are also positives to seeking yourself. Unquestionably, the Internet has become a tool for minorities and others who have felt marginalized by mainstream society to connect online. The removal of geographic barriers mean that people can meet and talk about their common interests and shared life experiences regardless of location. Expanding common experiences across regions, such as knowing that kids everywhere are using Vine or following a certain band, can create bonds. Take Bronies or comic book fans — Internet back channels have existed as long as the Internet has existed, from the first informal chat rooms to your own particular Twitter circle. People actually have Twitter friends now that they met online, and sometimes, meet IRL (In Real Life).

This plays out in public affairs in various ways. Whether you’re fighting for or against an issue, a large part of the battle is connecting with people or making it feel like this issue means something to them, personally.

One of the dangers comes in assuming you know your audience without doing any of the work to actually understand them. You might think it’s Jenny from rural wherever, with three kids and a minivan that you’re after — it’s not always. It could actually be downtown Michelle, lawyer and urbanite, who cares about your cause. Or Bob or Richard; Braedon or Noah; Ashley or Ava. As the aforementioned Tinder experiment lays out, with things like online dating, we base our likes or dislikes on a number of signs, and what we’re really doing with public affairs campaigns is trying to decipher those signs.

Semiotics is the study of signs, and when looking for resonating messages, you’re essentially trying to figure out a series of symbols, guides, hieroglyphs, that all say that your message in particular is meant for a given individual. Kind of like dating. The trouble is, not all signs mean the same things to the same people. The text that one group might find inspiring, another finds off-putting. Markers of class can vary widely from culture to culture. It’s not always straightforward as to what you’re communicating and to whom. Moreover, it’s not always easy to tell what, specifically, is making your message resonate or not. It could be the phrase you’re using. It could be the typeface. It could be the photo — or it could be a small part of the photo. A picture with a lake in the background could be comforting and cottage-y to some, and ominous and bleak to another. Making assumptions about what types of things certain types of people like is not only exclusionary, it’s limiting for your messaging.

Much like users’ online exploration via MSN and through MySpace, discovering the ins and outs and likes and dislikes of your audience is work. You don’t just land on the perfect set of Good Charlotte lyrics that expresses your inner you, you have to try a few out first. You don’t just select a perfect Facebook profile picture that speaks to all of your interests and many-faceted personalities forever. Responsiveness is usually emotional and automatic, but how we see ourselves and what we’re looking for often changes or shifts subtly. While remaining consistent, people are often looking for new and more interesting ways to express or define themselves. And if people are looking for themselves online, that means what they are looking for is subtly changing and shifting too.

So the Internet constantly seems new, partly because of all of this fluctuating identity-building and as a giant communications tool, the World Wide Web has become the de facto area to do it. The Internet will continue to experience growing pains as we all continue to muddle around with our own biases and preferences and constantly update what and who we are in our own heads. Clearly, as the studies indicate, none of us are perfect, and so neither is our online behaviour. More and more it is a reflection of offline personalities. Identity is also partly manufactured, and sometimes people don’t know something about themselves until they see it coming from someone else, someone they aspire to be. It is individual, but also influenced by the surrounding content. So it would follow that successful messaging needs to do the same and follow these paths of self-discovery.

Hitting the right messaging mark with the right people online takes investigation and it needs to be updated, and updated as frequently as people’s own need to cultivate their online selves. Small changes to public affairs messaging can make a big difference to what you are saying to your audienceﾅthe kind of big difference as say, a new ~*~smiley face~*~ here or winky face there.

It’s hard to imagine going a day without Google. Directions to a restaurant, a recipe for dinner or a search for a news story you’re curious about – Google’s resourcefulness has become ubiquitous with modern living. There’s a reason ‘Google’ is a verb recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary. While innocuous online interactions might seem forgettable to the individual user, collectively, they can provide deep insight, signal larger trends and even predict offline behaviour.

The first iteration of Google Trends was launched in 2006, and has been continually upgraded since. Its current version allows users to track news stories and the words and phrases used in searches, breaking them down by time and location. Google Trends also provides data on the type of search (web, image, news, Google Shopping or YouTube) and related top and rising topics and queries.

This resource has inspired researchers of all kinds to apply its open data to their fields of study. Sociologists have used to it examine parents’ curiosity surrounding their child’s weight or intelligence, while investors have tried to find connections between behavioural changes with searches and stock prices. News editors and producers can use the tool to map out how stories and pop culture trends are resonating. After Donald Trump’s success on Super Tuesday, The Globe and Mail, as part of its analysis, reported that Americans searching ‘moving to Canada’ spiked.

In all cases, this data enables researchers or curious members of the general public with the ability to monitor and understand regional breakdowns and related searches. The ﾑmoving to Canada’ sentiment was most popular in Norfolk, Virginia, and related searches mentioned Donald Trump or Raven Symone, a celebrity whose musing on the subject grabbed headlines. Further, the ﾑmoving to Canada’ search has skyrocketed since the beginning of February and the volume is still strong moving into March.

Beyond exploring trends, can Google actually forecast the future? Could it, for example, predict the outcome of an election?

Recent updates to Google Trends now provide enough granular, real-time data to allow users to track behaviour in key regions and correlate it with expected electoral outcomes. The New York Times recently examined Google searches in states prior to their caucuses and primaries, finding that electoral results in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada closely aligned with their respective shares of search volume.

Obvious doubts about this predictive model persist: just because someone Googles Donald Trump, doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him. However, with recent data showing the power earned media coverage can have on popular appeal, it’s not hard to see why someone’s interest in a candidate on Google can correspond with real-life support at the ballot box. Here in Canada, Google Trends accurately forecasted Justin Trudeau’s win in October. While Stephen Harper began the campaign as the most searched leader, Trudeau ended the campaign far ahead of his Conservative and NDP counterparts. Notably, despite leading public opinion polling in August, Thomas Mulcair remained a distant third in Google Trends for the duration of the campaign, forecasting his party’s relegation to third party status.

While promising and certainly interesting, Google Trends creates what some experts call ‘Big Data Hubris’, the false assumption that new tools can replace, rather than complement, traditional research methods. One notable example of this is Google Flu Trends. First launched in 2009, it tracked regional searches of flu-related terms and was able to predict outbreaks two weeks before the United States Center of Disease Control was able to do so. However, shortly after, this predictive model was found to be deeply flawed, as it was unable to predict the swine flu epidemic and missed the peak of the 2013 flu season by 140 per cent.

But why was Google so wrong? Simply put, because humans are the ones doing the searches. In understanding how Google Trends failed, researchers concluded that people weren’t as sick as they thought. Indeed, only 8.8 per cent of people who exhibit flu-like symptoms actually have the virus – explaining why doctor’s offices are unnecessarily clogged during flu season and a user who Googles flu remedies isn’t necessarily inflicted.

Until the crystal ball is perfected, amateur and professional researchers alike will experiment with and refine methodologies. Sourced data will still require human analysis, extraction and perspective for proper qualification and application. At Navigator, we use a library of digital tools to augment our traditional research. While social media listening, Google Trends and other online analytics do not replace our quantitative and qualitative research methods, they do provide insight into how our client’s issues are being consumed and discussed in the age of Twitter and the 24/7 news cycle — insight that many can ill afford to live without.

After weeks of planning, recording and testing, we’re proud to launch Navigator’s first podcast, Political Traction. We created Political Traction to assess how much traction political leaders, pundits, and media get with the people they’re trying to reach: people like you. Every week, we look at the top political issues being discussed in Ottawa and assess how much they resonated with Canadians across the country. Our first three episodes are now live on our new website, politicaltraction.fm, on Soundcloud, or on iTunes.

If the name ‘Political Traction’ sounds familiar to you, well, that’s because it’s not entirely new. Fans of CBC’s Power and Politics may remember a segment that Navigator’s Jaime Watt used to host every week from 2011-2014. Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

Political Traction ran for four seasons, and now, we’re expanding on this original concept by taking our first foray into podcasting. With podcasting, we saw an opportunity to take the original made-for-TV concept and dive deeper. Every week, our own Allie McHugh and David Woolley run through the top three issues making news in Ottawa and on Parliament Hill. We analyze how much traction Ottawa got with the Canadian public. Then, to tell us what this all means, and analyze how in (or out) of sync Ottawa is with Canadians, Allie speaks with one of our public affairs experts.

In our inaugural episode, Allie explains how the podcast got started and talks with Jaime about the original idea for Political Traction and why it matters.

To conduct this weekly analysis, we refined our methodology, which is explained in great detail in our second episode, complete with tables and charts for the data head in all of us.

And finally, to round out the package, we have our first weekly episode available for download. This week, Allie and David breakdown the top issues in Ottawa: the national deficit, Canada’s mission to fight ISIS, and the perception of the Liberal party’s strategy. After discussing whether these issues got any traction, Allie interviews Will Stewart, Managing Principal at Navigator and founding Principal of Ensight, to explain why or why not these issues are resonating with Canadians across the country.

We’re excited to share this project with you. You can look forward to a new episode in your podcast player of choice, every Monday. Every now and then we’ll mix it up with special episodes and documentaries. Don’t miss out! Subscribe today on iTunes, or at politicaltraction.fm.

The actual birth date and age of the hashtag is unknown. Its early years are surrounded in mystery, leaving many to speculate to its true life story. Seeking public approval from a young age, the hashtag tried on many monikers and identities, making it difficult to trace a linear life story. However, most accept that the hashtag has distinguished origins and was always destined for a life of fame. Today, it is one of the most powerful and frequently used tools in public affairs campaigns. However, it’s journey to becoming a titan of online conversations was not always a smooth one, and you should consider both its life story and shifting cachet when seeking its services.

Early Life

The hashtag’s ancestors hail from Ancient Rome, from the renowned Libra Pondo, or ‘pound in weight’ line. An established and respected name, the family business began in the 14th century (during the late Medici rule) and was active throughout Rome. Their crest of ‘lb’ marked the weight of various goods and it was often stylized with a bar across the top of both the ‘l’ and the ‘b’ to indicated the connection between the two letters and to ensure that the ‘l’ was not mistaken for the number 1. When the family immigrated to North America, a misunderstanding at the immigration desk, so common to new arrivals, resulted in a name change and the stylized Libra Pondo ‘lb’ became the # and referred to, informally, as ‘the pound sign’. Once in North America, the Libra Pondos carried on the family business of indicating pound units under their new crest, and as they established themselves in North America they also branched into new ventures, such as indicating general numbers.

Referred to simply as ‘the number sign,’ the hashtag spent its childhood in a completely different sphere than its current fast-paced life of fame — moving around the countryside, growing up in the slow-paced and pastoral landscapes of chess games, proof-reading, and cartography. Precocious and something of a prodigy, it received the honour of representing a move that results in a checkmate in chess when still in its infancy; moving into proof-reading, it shouldered responsibility beyond its young age and took on the role of indicating that a space should be inserted. In adolescence, the hashtag experienced a fit of restlessness and decided to travel abroad. Wanting to differentiate itself from convention and the family business, the hashtag began experimenting, and upon graduation, embarked on your typical post-secondary Eurotrip. The hashtag found alternative work slightly outside of the standardized family business while on sojourn in Sweden. Living far from its familial traditions and ties, it explored its artistic proclivities and settled into a more ‘European’ and ‘free’ lifestyle, marking the locations of lumber yards on Swedish maps.

Yet, a return to North American life was inevitable. While it enjoyed the bucolic and sleepy pace of Swedish cartography, the quiet life was not for the hashtag and it could not deny its ambition and thirst for the limelight. However, after years of living abroad on a meager cartographer’s stipend, the hashtag’s finances were strained. Having rejected the family line of work, this was no prodigal return, and it could not avail itself of the Libra Pondo resources. Thus, with no other options, the hashtag settled in New Jersey and took up work with a new and exciting telephone company.

Early Career

In 1968, Bell Laboratories, creator of the Touch Tone phone, wanted symbols to use with their new technology and even out the numbers on their keypad grid. The company sent researchers across North America to assess public opinion on what they would like included alongside the numbers on their dial pad. Being referred to as ‘the number sign,’ the hashtag was a natural selection, and was taken on by Bell Laboratories, where it made its debut on their new phone pad. Incidentally, this is where it met its close friend the asterisk, also a new addition to the dialing pad. Thanks to their lineage, both the hashtag and the asterisk were already familiar to computer systems and the standard QWERTY keyboard, and they enjoyed success in their new employment. Despite its achievements, however, the hashtag still wanted a name and legacy separate from its family line. While at Bell Laboratories, it changed its name to ‘the Octothorpe’ and asked to be credited as such in the phone manuals.

The hashtag toiled for some time in steady employment, but low-level celebrity. Sure, it was ubiquitous, but it still hungered for greater fame than simple name-recognition and procedural convenience— something a little more Hollywood and little less textbook. Looking to hit it big, it jumped on the opportunity to, yet again, be involved with new and exciting technology. In the late 1990s, the Internet was catching fire, and the hashtag searched for avenues that would present new challenges and uncharted territory. After an exhausting search, it finally found work in the unregulated, unfiltered, and underground realm of chat rooms. Exploring the dark corners of Internet Relay Chats (IRC), the hashtag threw itself into the heady and reckless universe of instant communication, usernames, and slang. While its family still enjoyed quiet mainstream success, the hashtag became a member of the secret group of elemental symbols, The Glyphs (rumoured to be affiliated with the Free Masons and Illuminati. Various theories suggest that together, these three groups are responsible for the success of some of the most powerful figures in the world). Other notable, but less famous members of The Glyphs include the slash, the pilcrow (aka paragraph mark), the interrobang, and the manicule. Driven and competitive, the hashtag quickly gained prominence within the community, appearing before subject titles to mark different topics and channels of conversation in IRCs.

Fame

Into the 2000s, the hashtag was powerful and respected, but in secret. After years of dominating online backroom conversations and being employed by the technological elite, the hashtag became a crossover hit in 2007, when it was thrust into mainstream spotlight by communications giant, Twitter.

Twitter’s designer, Chris Messina, drew from his experience in IRCs and suggested the team use the hashtag to indicate different topics and create groups on their burgeoning communications platform. In a blog response to Chris and his suggestion, Stowe Boyd referred to the hashtag as such, instead of as the ‘pound sign’, for the first time in mainstream record. The hashtag immediately seized upon its new identity and prepared itself for the massive exposure this new social media platform offered.

Soon everyone wanted a piece of the hashtag. Even Twitter rival, Facebook, could not deny its star power and incorporated it into its social media interface. Instagram and Google + were quick to follow. Instagram in particular decided to employ the hashtag at every chance, where it was immediately swarmed by its millennial groupies who hastened to attach it to everything from #grateful, to #sorrynotsorry, to #brunch. With new fame and fortune the hashtag was no stranger to the #riseandgrind, and was forced to start every morning accompanying millions of Instagram and Twitter users on their daily trips to the gym and afterward, join them for breakfast.

Backlash

Like many celebrities in the 21st-century world of constant information and marketing, the hashtag experienced overexposure. Similar to other superstars such as JLO, Ben Affleck, and virtually every boy band in the early 2000s, the fact that the hashtag was everywhere became a reason to hate it. Suddenly, once a celebrated and respected member of communications groups, it was a source of derision and sarcasm.

This backlash reached its climax in 2013 with the infamous late-night Jimmy Fallon skit. Joined by Justin Timberlake, the two celebrities mocked the excessive use of the hashtag and inflicted untold injury to its reputation (the hashtag briefly considered seeking damages, but ultimately, decided that would only do further harm to its brand). The skit culminated with ‘#hashtag’, painfully depicting that its overuse had rendered the hashtag, essentially, useless. Reeling from the blow, it took a step back and lowered its public profile. After the skit, people were less enthusiastic in employing the hashtag and for a time, it was notably absent (although not completely gone) from the tweets and posts of cutting-edge social media users, such as journalists, writers, and editors.

This is most clearly seen in Twitter’s daily ticker of trending tops. In recent years, the hashtag has begun to slip from the headlines of today’s news. Recently, Twitter’s ‘trending’ account, a live updated log of the top issues on Twitter, has begun to include topics that do not include a hashtag. While this space was once completely dominated by the hashtag, new algorithms and Twitter’s realization that the hashtag is only used in particular instances resulted in a slip from prominence.

Humanitarian work and campaigns

While away from the mainstream spotlight, the hashtag became involved in various political and human rights causes. Becoming affiliated with various advocate groups, the hashtag became involved with some of the biggest online movements and conversations of the 21st century. From #YesAllWomen, #BlackLivesMatter, #BringBackOurGirls, to corporate outreach like #BellLetsTalk, the hashtag was instrumental in drawing attention to important issues online. This wasn’t completely uncharted territory for the hashtag: it came up working on causes, such as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run, when it was employed on the #askobama campaign.

With these causes, the hashtag realized its true worth within the social media realm: that it is uniquely suited to transcend geographical space and connect like-minded people. The hashtag’s humanitarian work demonstrated that it is no mere marketing tool, but a useful part of raising awareness and effecting change. The ability with which the properly employed hashtag can rally people and focus them on an issue is unparalleled on today’s social media platforms.

Employing the hashtag

Now, the hashtag is more selective in its employ. While it once latched on to any phrase or tagline in hopes of stealing more and more spotlight, with its age, maturity, and experience it has somewhat receded from the public eye to more practical and logical applications. If you are attempting to engage the hashtag in its services for your public affairs issue, you should remember its history and use these guidelines to ensure a successful working relationship:

Pick one:

At this stage in its career, the hashtag does not like to be overemployed. Like others who have survived the social media boom, the hashtag has realized the value of strategic restraint. As with most established tools, its power come in its practicality. You should not employ the hashtag multiple times for multiple phrases and idioms related to your cause or issue. If you do, it’s distinction and usefulness is diminished. Going back to its roots, the hashtag prefers to be employed for its organizational and research capabilities. To gain awareness, you want users to be able to easily search and find all of the content related to your public affairs issue. Thus, you should decide on one appropriate phrase that encapsulates your campaign as a whole and that can be applied to your messaging. If you are running multiple issue campaigns, use your best judgement as to whether you should engage the hashtag for separate phrases for each campaign or one overall brand hashtag. In every instance of employ, at most, you should use only one to two other hashtag phrases in conjunction in a single post, such as with affiliated causes.

Be specific:

The hashtag recommends that you do not make your selected phrase too long or too wordy: brevity is key, and while the hashtag appreciates style, it prefers relevance. For a successful engagement with the hashtag, above all else, ensure that your phrase makes sense for your campaign. It can be witty, it can be funny, and it can even be oblique, but it should not be too broad. It should be quickly and easily identifiable as your cause and be specific enough to demarcate your issue from other similar causes and organizations online.

Speaking of brevity, and of course, style, do not include spaces or punctuation with the hashtag. The hashtag does not like them, and it will refuse to hyperlink your content within a group based on your phrase.

Do your homework:

Given its prominence, the hashtag is in demand and pressed for time. Do your due diligence before coming to the hashtag, and research the other phrases and channels on which it is already employed. If you want to have a successful and fruitful relationship with the hashtag, you must first rule out that you are not engaging it in an interaction that conflicts with its other work. Otherwise, the hashtag cannot help you in distinguishing your messaging from existing online content that is not applicable to your cause.

Play to its strengths:

At its core, the hashtag is about the people. For public affairs campaigns you want to connect with people who are likely to support your cause and to educate others. In addition to bringing together groups — both online and offline — the hashtag also excels at consumer/audience communication. Don’t use it simply as a a brand awareness mechanism. One of the most effective engagements for the hashtag is to host a Q and A on Twitter in which people can track and participate.

Life today

Today, the hashtag enjoys a respected and illustrious career. Should you wish to engage the hashtag in its services, remember that it has already lived a long life. Achieving its childhood dream of distinguishing itself from its family, most online users think of the hashtag first and the pound sign second. If you wish for your public affairs campaign to be similarly successful in engaging and building awareness, learn from the hashtag’s experience. It would be best to team up. There is little to lose in such a relationship and much to gain. After all, the hashtag is, truly, a pro.

Photo: “scales” by Petter Palandar