Searchable Talk

Hashtags began as a way to find posts, but they now also help people join conversations and show where they stand with others. This book looks at how meaning is built with these tags, a form of social metadata that has received little scholarly attention even though it plays a central role in tagging, curating and searching online content.

Taking a social semiotic approach, the author examines what hashtags do in relation to both written language and images. The work extends the model of ambient affiliation she proposed in 2012, offering a broader analytical framework for tracing how alignment between users forms, one bond at a time, in online discourse. A particular focus is the communing role of hashtags in metacommentary and ridicule, illustrated through a case study of recent Twitter posts about US President Donald Trump.

The book is aimed at researchers in digital communication and at undergraduates taking social media courses across a range of disciplines.