“You Ok Sis?”: Black Vernacular, Community Formation, and the Innate Tensions of the Hashtag

“[...] Hashtags are clusters (jokes, awareness campaigns, virulent trolling) that spawn further clusters. Because the hashtag multiplies infinitely—in that it can be taken up and used for almost any purpose that aligns with the hashtag originator’s intent or greatly deviates from that intent—a dynamic tension with linearity serves as a fundamental for thinking through the innate nature of the hashtag. Framing hashtags as multiplicitous (technocultural) assemblages provides a way to think through the various strategies users implement to shape engagement with hashtags they have authored or to cultivate certain parameters of use around hashtags on their own timelines.”