Make It Trend! Setting Right-Wing Media Agendas Using Twitter Hashtags

In this chapter, we test the efficacy with which right-wing Twitter influencers are able to drive news media agendas via “hashtag activism.” Building on media theory and recent social media studies and drawing on the successful right-wing #AOCLied hashtag campaign of February 2021 as a “proof of concept,” we track the tweets of 19 right-wing influencers in near-real time for 9 weeks (mid-March to mid-May 2021), identifying all hashtags coined, amplified, or mentioned. We find that only 8.8% (3 of 34) of hashtags coined or amplified by right-wing influencers were plausibly intended as a deliberate campaign to game Twitter’s trending algorithm. While these hashtags did garner some news media attention, they were primarily covered by far-right media outlets and never for more than a few days. We conclude with a discussion of what this means for hashtag activism, the role that Twitter plays in editorializing its trending lists and deplatforming users, and future research into other mechanisms of amplification.