"Free the Nipple" is a campaign created in 2012 in New York as a protest against the censorship of female nipples. Over the years, the movement spread on Instagram by the use of the hashtag freethenipplemovement. It is interesting to map, through the study of the co-occurrences of hashtags on Instagram, which are the topics most associated by the users to the movement and their relationships.
Main Findings
From the co-hashtags network of #freethenipplemovement, some topics that are far from the movement emerge, for example, the “Garena Freefire” videogame, the LGBTQ+ community and the political meme.
Interestingly, the hashtag #freethenipplemovement has also been used over time in other important battles, such as the one against breast cancer.
The co-hashtags related to the LGBTQ+ community only interact among themselves, unlike all the other hashtags that are also linked to other topics.
Some hashtags act as bridges among different topics; for instance, #beauty is the connection between hashtags about maternity and the ones related to jobs on social networks, and #empowerment is the link between feminist and motivational hashtags.
The hashtags #sendnude, #freenude and #fuckmypussy are used with #kanyewest, #kimkardashian and #kendalljenner.
The #freethenipplemovement hashtag is used most of the time with the hashtag group “follow catcher” to increase the number of visualizations of Instagram posts.
Protocol
