1. Hijacking the Hashtag: A Case Study of #BreakTheInternet on Twitter
Dr. Ognyan Seizov
Faculty 10: Linguistics and Literary Science

2. Outline Twitter hashtag as a tool #BreakTheInternet
Research questions and study design
Results
Conclusions
Discussion
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

3. Warning
The presentation contains visual material which features partial nudity.
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

4. Twitter hashtag as a tool
“A unique tagging format linking Tweets to user-defined concepts” (Chang & Iyer, 2012, p. 248)
Adds value to the microblog information system and allows it to meet specific user needs (Taylor, 1982), i.e. categorize, search, and share
Interaction tool which facilitates communication within and across user groups and hierarchies (Blaszka et al., 2012)
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

5. #BreakTheInternet
Kim Kardashian’s cover story for PAPER Magazine (12 November 2014)
< >
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

6. #BreakTheInternet
An example of a micro-meme and a priori tagging (Huang, Thornton, & Efthimiadis, 2010, pp )
Micro-meme: “emergent topics for which a tag is created, used widely for a few days, then disappears”
A priori tagging: “A user who observes the rise of a compelling trending topic micro-meme [takes] the tag associated with the meme and [composes] his or her own tweet on the subject”
Purpose: “filtering and directing content so it appears in certain streams”
=> The hashtag is a low-threshold gateway into high-visibility information streams.
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

7. Research Questions
RQ1: How often did hashtag hijacking occur for #BreakTheInternet?
RQ2: What alternative topics appeared in the “hash-jacked” Tweets?
RQ3: How, if at all, did users react to the “hash-jacked” Tweets?
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

8. Study design
One-shot sampling: Top Tweets tagged #BreakTheInternet at 10:30:00 (GMT+1) on 14 November 2014 / N=58
Multimodal content analysis (visuals + text) (cf. Bateman, 2014; Seizov, 2014)
Coded for:
(1) Topic: relevant / hijack;
(2) Valence: positive / negative / neutral;
(3) Visual: present / absent;
2 independent coders (Krippendorff’s alpha=.87)
Qualitative multimodal content analysis of hijacked posts
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

9. #BreakTheInternet: Quantitative results
Most Top Tweets were on topic, positive/humorous, and text-based
A total of 6 hijackings occurred (≈10%)
Hijacked Top Tweets had variable valence and often included visuals
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

10. #BreakTheInternet: Hijackings
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

11. Summary
RQ1: How often did hashtag hijacking occur in the #BreakTheInternet case?
#BreakTheInternet was hijacked in about 10% of the Top Tweets sample. Low incidence due to the tag’s overall 57% negative sentiment (Twitter, 2014).
RQ2: What alternative topics appeared in the “hash-jacked” Tweets?
Most hijacked Tweets shifted attention to the concurrent comet landing (#CometLanding was the other trending hashtag). Isolated product, service, and social awareness Tweets also appeared in the sample.
RQ3: How, if at all, did users react to the “hash-jacked” Tweets?
Hashjackings which pertained to the comet landing and featured a visual got the most favorites and RTs. Hashjackings promoting a business or a cause got much more modest reactions as did humorous hashjackings with no explicit purpose.
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

12. Discussion Top Tweets is a very limited sample
Co-trending hashtags create interference
5 months later: #BreakTheInternet lives on and has moved far beyond the PAPER article
Finer sentiment scales needed
Sarcasm?
Humor?
Visual metaphor?
Follow up with other hashtag fads, of various valences
Although the sample is limited, the trend of not hijacking hashtags which attract negativity makes sense in the marketing context.
The hashtag has evolved beyond its original context and is now used extensively, maintaining only a loose connection to its original topic.
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015

13. Thank you for your attention! Contact: seizov@uni-bremen.de
20 March 2015
Seizov – Hijacking the Hashtag: #BreakTheInternet – GOR 2015