This project was developed for the third phase of the Final Synthesis Design Studio, part of the master’s program in Communication Design of Politecnico di Milano. Our topic, during the last two phases of the course, was hashtag hijacking and stan culture.

Even though some of us use Twitter daily, especially to get information, we didn’t know much about either of them when we started our research for the second phase, through which we scraped, analyzed, and observed different hijacked hashtags and their dynamics on social media.

Through this investigative work, we were able to grasp some patterns, draw some insights, and, ultimately, learn quite a bit about hashtags. For this third phase, we decided we wanted to share some of our newly-gained knowledge.

During the second phase, we developed 4 different protocols to approach hashtag hijacking in four different ways, as follows.

For the first one, we observed how associated hashtags (hashtags used in the same tweet) can tell a story. A change from a group of associations to another might indicate a shift of meaning in the use of the main hashtag, and of course, a potential hijacking.

The approach for the second went towards exploring different social media platforms. While developing this part of the research, we learned how the same hashtag hijacking can have palpable differences and surprising similarities regarding the content posted across platforms.

We also learned, developing our third protocol, that not only the platform can offer intriguing insights into the phenomenon, but also the way it travels across languages. It was interesting to observe which terms people around the world use to describe a hijacking.

For this phase of the studio, nonetheless, our main inspiration came from our fourth protocol. With it, we were able to see how the trending content associated with a hashtag changes during a hijacking.

In the week after the US Elections, Trump supporters organized a so-called ‘Million MAGA March’ to manifest against what they believe to be election fraud. They used Twitter to spread information about the event, but it did not take long for the k-pop stan to start using the hashtag to spread pancake pictures. The protocol aimed to observe the presence of hijackers and Trump supporters among the most engaged with tweets.

This part of our research was the starting point to develop the artifact of the third phase, since it contrasts the two sides of the invisible battleground of hashtags: the march supporters versus the pancake hijackers. In the visualization, the concentration of the purple posts on the day previous to the march demonstrates the stan culture mobilization to conquer space on twitter.

In 2020, hashtag hijacking drew the world’s attention and more than once made the news — and with new hijackings in early January 2021, it doesn’t seem to be just a bound-to-fashions issue. By telling the stories of three hijacked hashtags, the aim of this project is to: first, share what we learned and the insights we had during our previous research; second, invite twitter users to learn more about this phenomenon, as to more easily identify it or even take part in it; and third, to inspire reflection on the impacts this kind of dynamics might have on the consumption of information on Twitter.