The hashtag I choose is #IWillProtectYou. This hashtag was created at the end of Dec 2015. Sofia, an eight-year-old girl, lives in Dallas, Texas. She was intimidated after watching Donald Trump call to ban Muslims from the country. Sofia’s mother, Melissa Yassini, explained this issue on Facebook. Her post went viral and many U.S. service members created the hashtag #IWillProtectYou to deliver the message that they will protect Sofia.
The hashtag became trending on Jan 2016, but it still had hundreds of mentions on Feb, 2016 on Twitter.
Specifically, the number of mentions peaked on Feb 3rd, then went down around Feb 6th . The mention got a slight rise on Feb 9th, Feb 21st, and Feb 27th. These increases were caused by Twitter users who mentioned #IWillProtectYou to protest Donald Trump on Election Primary in New Hampshire, Nevada Caucus, and South Carolina. It is easy seen that when words such as “NeverTrump”, “Muslim”, “Religion”, “Sofia” appear in both the word cloud and Buzzgraph.
This hashtag has seen popularity in the U.S., and only the United Kingdom appears in geography. This is understandable because when the trending (in Jan 2016) has passed, and it became the issue of American itself, so other countries are less concerned to tweet out.
The most retweeted post using #IWillProtectYou is the user named Matt Stehman – a Democratic supporter. Stehman used to be a Democratic candidate for District 44 of the Pennsylvania State Senate in 2010. In his tweet, he quoted Yassini’s message and emphasized that he would never defend the country if Trump became the President. He also included the hashtag #NeverTrump and #America in his post.
I had no idea about this hashtag or the story behind it. Goes to show how one voice on social media can begin to create an entire group of people standing for or against something or someone. It also shows how strong the value of a hashtag can be, it united people’s emotions and can summarize their emotions in just a few characters.
I think you chose a great hashtag to follow – I remember this story as well and when I first noticed the trend I immediately read a lot of the tweets too. Awesome example of how an entire movement can start on social media in response to just one person (who probably doesn’t even have any kind of social account).