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Using Hashtags to Disambiguate Aboutness in Social Media Discourse: a Case Study of #Orlandostrong

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Using Hashtags to Disambiguate Aboutness in Social Media Discourse: a Case Study of #Orlandostrong USING HASHTAGS TO DISAMBIGUATE ABOUTNESS IN SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE: A CASE STUDY OF #ORLANDOSTRONG by NICHOLAS DEARMAS B.A. UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 2004 M.A. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA-CHARLOTTE, 2014 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2018 Major Professor: Stephanie Vie © 2018 Nicholas DeArmas ii ABSTRACT While the field of writing studies has studied digital writing as a response to multiple calls for more research on digital forms of writing, research on hashtags has yet to build bridges between different disciplines’ approaches to studying the uses and effects of hashtags. This dissertation builds that bridge in its interdisciplinary approach to the study of hashtags by focusing on how hashtags can be fully appreciated at the intersection of the fields of information research, linguistics, rhetoric, ethics, writing studies, new media studies, and discourse studies. Hashtags are writing innovations that perform unique digital functions rhetorically while still hearkening back to functions of both print and oral rhetorical traditions. Hashtags function linguistically as indicators of semantic meaning; additionally, hashtags also perform the role of search queries on social media, retrieving texts that include the same hashtag. Information researchers refer to the relationship between a search query and its results using the term “aboutness” (Kehoe and Gee, 2011). By considering how hashtags have an aboutness, the humanities can call upon information research to better understand the digital aspects of the hashtag’s search function. Especially when hashtags are used to organize discourse, aboutness has an effect on how a discourse community’s agendas and goals are expressed, as well as framing what is relevant and irrelevant to the discourse. As digital activists increasingly use hashtags to organize and circulate the goals of their discourse communities, knowledge of ethical strategies for hashtag use will help to better preserve a relevant aboutness for their discourse while enabling them to better leverage their hashtag for circulation. In this dissertation, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Twitter discourse that used #OrlandoStrong over the five-month period before the first anniversary of the Pulse shooting, I trace how the #OrlandoStrong discourse community used innovative rhetorical iii strategies to combat irrelevant content from ambiguating their discourse space. In Chapter One, I acknowledge the call from scholars to study digital tools and briefly describe the history of the Pulse shooting, reflecting on non-digital texts that employed #OrlandoStrong as memorials in the Orlando area. In Chapter Two, I focus on the literature surrounding hashtags, discourse, aboutness, intertextuality, hashtag activism, and informational compositions. In Chapter Three, I provide an overview of the stages of grounded theory methodology and the implications of critical discourse analysis before I detail how I approached the collection, coding, and analysis of the #OrlandoStrong Tweets I studied. The results of my study are reported in Chapter Four, offering examples of Tweets that were important to understanding how the discourse space became ambiguous through the use of hashtags. In Chapter Five, I reflect on ethical approaches to understanding the consequences of hashtag use, and then I offer an ethical recommendation for hashtag use by hashtag activists. I conclude Chapter Five with an example of a classroom activity that allows students to use hashtags to better understand the relationship between aboutness, (dis)ambiguation, discourse communities, and ethics. This classroom activity is provided with the hope that instructors from different disciplines will be able to provide ethical recommendations to future activists who may benefit from these rhetorical strategies. iv To my son, Everett Isaac DeArmas. Remember, challenging yourself is the best way to find out who you are and what you’re made of. Failure and frustration are stops on the path to success; embrace them as much as you do your achievements, but learn from them. Being your father is still my greatest achievement. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincerest thanks go to my committee members for their guidance, support, and confidence in me. Thank you for helping me to achieve my goals with your invaluable insight. Specifically, thank you to Dr. Anastasia Salter for always helping to point me in better, more fruitful directions when my research and writing progress came to a halt. Thank you to Dr. Stephanie Wheeler for helping me to better frame my analysis with respect to rhetorical theory. Thank you to Dr. Melissa Dodd for providing me with feedback informed by perspectives outside the humanities. Thank you to Dr. Jonathan Beever for introducing me to information ethics. Jonathan, I owe you a debt of gratitude for advising not only my ethics section, but also giving me your sage advice about approaching life as an academic. My chair, Dr. Stephanie Vie, deserves particular thanks for her unwavering support, generosity with time, enthusiastic encouragement, extensive mentorship, and theoretical guidance throughout my time in the Texts and Technology program. From agreeing to directed readings, inviting me to present with you at conferences, collaborating with me as a writer, to coaching me through comprehensive exams, the prospectus defense, and the dissertation, Stephanie, you have forever molded me as a scholar. I can’t think of anyone academic who has shaped me more as a writer than you. You are one of the most important scholars in the field of writing studies, and it has been my honor to study with you at the University of Central Florida. I only hope as a professor to one day pay forward the kindness and generosity you have shown me during my time here. I couldn’t have completed my pursuit of my doctorate without the love and assistance of my family. My folks, Raul and Jeanne DeArmas, have always emphasized to me the importance of education, I hope you acknowledge this as proof that I listened. Thank you for always making sacrifices in your life, so that mine would be better. I also owe my siblings Mark and Emily DeArmas a debt of gratitude for opening their home to me without hesitation when I moved to Orlando to study. Finally, to Missy: thank you for always challenging me to be better, for standing by me throughout the last seven years, and for believing in me. If not for you, I wouldn’t have begun this journey. Without you, I wouldn’t have endured. Because of you, I did. I love you always. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. vii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ xii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 Overview ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Explaining the Choice to Include Images of Actual Tweets....................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 5 Studying Hashtags: Addressing the Call from Scholars ............................................................. 5 The Hashtag: A New Writing Tool ............................................................................................. 6 The Pulse Shooting ..................................................................................................................... 7 Social media and Pulse ............................................................................................................. 11 #OrlandoStrong Murals in the City of Orlando ........................................................................ 13 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................... 20 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 20 The History of the Hashtag ....................................................................................................... 21 Hashtags: Semantic Tools for Writers ...................................................................................... 26 Hashtags and Aboutness ........................................................................................................... 27 Aboutness and Informational Composition .............................................................................. 28 Hashtags as Style: Amplifying Tweet Content ......................................................................... 30 Oral Qualities of the Hashtag ...................................................................................................
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