Are You Connected Through Consumption? The Role of Hashtags in Political Consumption

Abstract

The debate surrounding protesting National Football League (NFL) games began with player Colin Kaepernick’s decision not to stand for the national anthem in response to increased police violence toward people of color in the United States. Public use of social media has cast players’ behavior of kneeling or sitting during the anthem into an international spotlight and led to individuals’ participation in political consumerism, including boycotting the NFL. The goal of this research is to examine the role of a hashtag in political consumerism through the lens of social impact theory and its relation to individuals’ consumption practices. Using social network and content analysis, this study examined a 4-day sample of tweets and accompanying hashtags that included #BoycottNFL during 9 days of the 2017 NFL season. Findings of this study suggest that the line between lifestyle and contentious political consumerism is blurred. Boycotting the NFL is contentious political consumerism, but it consists of lifestyle political consumerism through the individualized behavior of creating a tweet, which inadvertently is a part of collective action. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that accompanying hashtags demonstrated three types of political consumerism sentiment (i.e., political-, civic-, and consumption-related) that change the tone of a tweet, which may alienate actors who are focused on the consumption practices of the collective action. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Opposing brand activism: triggers and strategies of consumers’ antibrand actions

“…Declaring a boycott seemed however more like a signifier of disapproval of the company's political statements-regardless of whether boycotting takes place or not, the statement itself functions as a signal of disappointment. According to Johnson et al (2019), using boycott-related hashtags in social media may also help connect with like-minded consumers, which show how declarations of boycott serve multiple purposes.…”

“…Such activity could be considered one form of meta-level participation in the formation of the public discourse (Pies et al , 2014). On the other hand, consumers also use the brand publics to spread their political ideologies outside their usual networks and discussion arenas (Arvidsson and Caliandro, 2016; Johnson et al , 2019).…”

“…The opponents used a variety of creative, technology-afforded strategies to oppose brand activism, formulated here as boycotting, discrediting the brand and trapping. We argue that the brand publics serve as a springboard for the opponents to spread their own political ideologies and reach new audiences (Arvidsson and Caliandro, 2016; Johnson et al , 2019). The findings advance our understanding of the consequences of brand activism, which has become both a mainstream marketing tactic and an established dimension of corporate political advocacy.…”

#ShoutYourAbortion on Instagram: Exploring the Visual Representation of Hashtag Movement and the Public’s Responses

“…This result corresponds with the meaning of hashtag movement. Since hashtags make it easy both to share one’s own story and to find similar stories of others, it may link one’s personal experience with social movements (Dejmanee et al, 2020; Dobrin, 2020; Johnson et al, 2019). Also, the embedded texts contained words with contrasting meanings in the context of #ShoutYourAbortion movement, and hashtag hijacking (Ahmed, 2018; Kosenko et al, 2019) was supposed to occur at least partially.…”

Fostering Consumer–Brand Relationships through social media brand communities

“…Although the FMCG market includes product categories of low involvement, the corresponding brands have a variety of signifiers in the consumer mind, such as brands that appeal to consumer affective experiences, or brands that work as social symbols, or also brands with an utilitarian appeal. It is expected that different brands will induce different dynamics within the community and influence consumers in different ways (Johnson et al 2019).…”