1. Twitter 201: Twitter & Social Movements
Washington University in St. Louis Libraries, April 26, 2012
Jaleh Fazelian &
Makiba Foster

2. Twitter and Social Movements
• Twitter Lingo
• History
• Being mobile
• Censorship
• Using #hashtags
• Power of the RT
• Questions

3. Twitter Lingo
• ReTweeting
• Hashtag

4. #IranElection
Green Protest / Javad Saharban/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

5. #IranElection

7. A Match Made in Heaven
Twitter for Android / yum9me / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Twitter Meeting @ Lowlands / Anne Helmond / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

8. What do these countries have in
common?
• China
– Full Twitter Ban
• Britain
– Riots in 2011
• Iran
– #IranElection
• Egypt
– #Jan25
• South Korea
– North Korean Twitter Account

9. Censorship
Twitter Pack / Carrot Creative / CC BY 2.0

10. Sina Weibo

11. Harnessing the Power of Twitter with
# Hashtags #
Photo Credit: Christopher Lazo

12. Variations of #

13. #SocialMovements on Twitter
• Community
• Awareness
• Organization

14. Revolution & ReTweets (RT)
# × RT = Trending Topic

15. Twitter Year In Review
Hashtags of 2011
Most ReTweeted 2010 • #egypt
• #tigerblood
1. Gulf Oil Spill • #threewordstoliveby
2. Haiti Earthquake • #idontunderstandwhy
3. Pakistan Floods • #japan
4. Koreas Conflict • #improudtosay
• #superbowl
5. Chilean Miners Rescue
• #jan25
6. Chavez Tas Ponchao Trending World News 2011
7. Wikileaks Cablegate • Mubarak’s resignation
8. Hurricane Earl • Raid on Osama bin Laden
9. Prince Williams Engagement • Japanese earthquake and Fukushima
nuclear disaster
10. World Aids Day • Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
• Gaddafi’s death
• Swine Flu outbreak

16. Questions / Tim O'Brien / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

17. Works Cited
• Al-Rasheed, Madawi. “Sectarianism as Counter-Revolution: Saudi Arabian Responses to the Arab Spring.”
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, v. 11, no. 3, 2011.
• Ding, Ling. “Micro-blogging in network society.” Journal of Digital and Research Publishing.
http://6pmjournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/micro-blogging-in-network-society.html Accessed 3/30/2012.
• Furman, Henry “The Hashtag: A Case Study”. http://wirescrossedblog.tumblr.com/post/15567326293/the-
hashtag-acasestudy Accessed April 10, 2012
• Golkar, Saeid. “Liberation or Suppression Technologies? The Internet, the Green Movement, and the
Regime in Iran.” International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, v. 9, no. 1, 2011.
• Key Global Telecom Indicators for the World Telecommunication Service Sector in 2011
(http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats#subscribers). Accessed April 10,
2012.
• Mobile Statistics, Stats and Facts 2011. (http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/2011-mobile-statistics-stats-
facts-marketing-infographic/). Accessed April 10, 2012.
• Parr, Ben. “Mindblowing #IranElection stats: 221,744 Tweets per Hour at Peak.” Mashable.
http://mashable.com/2009/06/17/iranelection-crisis-numbers/ Accessed April 19, 2012.
• Starbird, Kate K. "(how) Will the Revolution be Retweeted? Information Diffusion and the 2011 Egyptian
Uprising.” Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW
'12. http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/StarbirdPalen_RevolutionRetweeted.pdf Accessed April 23, 2012
• Wasserman, Todd. “The Architect of #OccupyWallStreet Praises the Power of ‘Magical Hashtags’.”
Mashable. http://mashable.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wall-street-adbusters/. Accessed April 10, 2012

18. Contact
• Jaleh Fazelian
– @jalehf
– jfazelia@wustl.edu
• Makiba Foster
– @makibaj
– mfoster@wustl.edu
• http://libguides.wustl.edu/twitter201
• @WUSTLlibraries