How hijacking of hashtags is used to influence information integrity

In April 2024, the #24HourEconomy hashtag was in the X trends for days. This hashtag came about due to the former President and flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama’s promise to introduce a policy that will make it possible for businesses and individuals to operate 24/7.

However, #24HourEconomy was not only in the trends because of genuine conversations about the policy. Conversations that did not bother with the policy were identified in the hashtag analysis.

The #24HourEconomy was hijacked by some users on social media. In a search for the hashtag #24HourEconomy, different kinds of posts unrelated to the policy emerged (see post here).

What is a hashtag?

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol. In the context of social media conversations and communications, hashtags are used to make posts discoverable and available to a wide audience. They are used across several social media platforms – X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, and LinkedIn.

A hashtag is a powerful tool to create awareness or perception about an issue. On June 21, 2024, the hashtag #BryanAcheampongImpact was in the trends on X. This was at the time when the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong, had been in the news after it was revealed that a hotel believed to be his had put in the bid to buy Ghana’s SSNIT hotels which were to be managed by the state. 

Within the period, the news had taken different twists and turns and the odds did not seem to go in favour of Bryan Acheampong as the public rage intensified. However, the hashtag  #BryanAchemeampongImpact came up online and the tweets highlighted his achievements in what was ostensibly a campaign to drown the negative posts.

What hashtag hijacking entails

Hashtag hijacking is a form of cyber content attack that arises in modern social media microblogging platforms. It is a social media tactic where users or spammers begin to use a hashtag of content unrelated to what the hashtag was originally intended for.

Xanthopoulos, P. et al. (2016)  in their research work explained hashtag hijacking as a “form of cyber content attack that occurs when a hashtag is used for a different purpose than the one originally intended, such as tagging messages with undesirable content and surfacing this content to a target audience.” 

For instance, in 2017, the popular #MeToo, a social movement to raise awareness against sexual abuse and sexual harassment where people made public their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse was later hijacked (here too). 

In September 2023, #WeAreNPP was trending on X. The hashtag was created to garner support from sympathisers of the NPP after the fallout of Alan Kyerematen from the party. However, some people later used it to amplify the government’s failures (see some posts here, here and here).

What are the effects of hashtag hijacking?

1. Spread mis-disinformation

On social media, one of the main modes of swaying public opinion is hashtag hijacking. Purveyors of disinformation sometimes ride on the popularity of keywords and trending hashtags to garner engagements, impressions and milage for their posts which hitherto the affiliation with the hashtag would not have been noticed. They do this to share false news and unrelated and unwanted content. 

Once the false information or content is associated with a hashtag, the algorithm on the media platform will make it available on the timeline of many users, thereby making the false content reach many people. This is also because hashtags are popular and easy to identify on social media. Moreso, they are targeted.

2. They create fake trends on social media

Social media trends indicate what conversation is popular on a particular platform at a point in time. Despite the constantly changing nature of trends, they show what conversations grabbed the attention of many and the content they engaged with the most. However, hashtag hijackers create a false trend on social media as they use the hashtag for other content rather than what the conversation is intended- mostly used by people to promote or advertise their goods and services This is because hashtags become popular and top the trends when they are widely and frequently used.

Through astroturfing, fake trends can emerge through artificially promoted coordinated activities. Astroturfing is a deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated campaign in disguise of unsolicited comments from people online through Coordinated inauthentic behaviour

Coordinated inauthentic behaviour “is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a mix of authentic, fake, and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network (AN) across multiple social media platforms.”

A study by Elmas et al shows that trends astroturfed are at least 20% of the top 10 global trends. 

Hashtag hijackers also use mass brigading to hijack hashtags. An explainer by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change indicates that people who hijack hashtags employ astroturfing by “creating fake posts on a forum or comment section that are designed to appear like genuine grassroots interest in a topic.” Many times, brigading follows a coordinated plan. It is a deliberate attempt to achieve a specific result (See examples here, here, here, here and here).

3. Hashtag hijacking is also used to control the narratives of political conversations. 

When people with political interests often seek to control the narratives of political conversations on social media, they like to influence people’s thoughts and stances on issues. One of the ways they do this is by making use of the hashtags. Sometimes, people hijack hashtags to control the narratives of political conversations especially when the conversation.  

Due to the popularity of hashtags, political communicators, footsoldiers and commentators use them to set their agenda other than what the hashtag was originally intended to mean. For instance, the #WeAreNPP hashtag on X in 2023 was hijacked to communicate a message other than what the supporters of NPP wanted to use it for. The NPP supporters had intended to use the #WeAreNPP to tell positive stories about their party after the resignation of Alan Kyerematen but others used it to sway conversations to their advantage.