This collection investigates the publics of the hashtag. Taking cues from critical public sphere theory, contributors are interested in publics that break beyond the mainstream - in other publics. They are interested in the kinds of publics that do politics in a way that is rough and emergent, flawed and messy, and ones in which new forms of collective power are being forged on the fly and in the shadow of loftier mainstream spheres. Hashtags are deictic, indexical - yet what they point to is themselves, their own dual role in ongoing discourse. Focusing on hashtags used for topics from Ferguson, Missouri, to Australian politics, from online quilting communities to labour protests, from feminist outrage to drag pop culture, this collection follows hashtag publics as they trend beyond Twitter into other spaces of social networking such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr as well as other media spaces such as television, print, and graffiti.

Contents: Nathan Rambukkana: Hashtags as Technosocial Events - Theorizing Hashtag Publics - Axel Bruns/Jean Burgess: Twitter Hashtags from Ad Hoc to Calculated Publics - Nathan Rambukkana: From #RaceFail to #Ferguson: The Digital Intimacies of Race-Activist Hashtag Publics - Theresa Sauter/Axel Bruns: #auspol: The Hashtag as Community, Event, and Material Object for Engaging with Australian Politics - Jean Burgess/Anne Galloway/Theresa Sauter: Hashtag as Hybrid Forum: The Case of #agchatoz - Daniel Faltesek: Hashtags and Activist Publics: #Time - Aaron S. Veenstra/Narayanan Iyer/Wenjing Xie/Benjamin A. Lyons/Chang Sup Park/Yang Feng: Come Together, Right Now: Retweeting in the Social Model of Protest Mobilization - Anna Antonakis-Nashif: Hashtagging the Invisible: Bringing Private Experiences into Public Debate : An #outcry against Sexism in Germany - Carlos D'Andréa/Geane Alzamora/Joana Ziller: Hashtags as Intermedia Agency Resources before FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil - Jenny Ungbha Korn: #FuckProp8: How Temporary Virtual Communities around Politics and Sexuality Pop Up, Come Out, Provide Support, and Taper Off - Stacy Blasiola/Yoonmo Sang/Weiai Wayne Xu: More than Words: Technical Activist Actions in #CISPA - Andy Campbell: Realism against #Realness: Wu Tsang, #Realness, and RuPaul's Drag Race - Amanda Grace Sikarskie: Living the #Quilt Life: Talking about Quiltmaking on Tumblr - Andrew Peck: Jokin' in the First World: Appropriate Incongruity and the #firstworldproblems Controversy - Anthony Santoro: #RaiderNation: The Digital and Material Identity and Values of a Superdiverse Fan Community - Meredith Clark: Black Twitter: Building Connection through Cultural Conversation - Nia I. Cantey and Cara Robinson: #BlackTwitter: Making Waves as a Social Media Subculture - Magdalena Olszanowski: The 1x1 Common: The Role of Instagram's Hashtag in the Development and Maintenance of Feminist Exchange - Sylvain Rocheleau/Mélanie Millette: Meta-Hashtag and Tag Co-occurrence: From Organization to Politics in the French Canadian Twittersphere - Brett Bergie and Jaigris Hodson: The Twitter Citizen: Problematizing Traditional Media Dominance in an Online Political Discussion - Sava Saheli Singh: Hashtagging #HigherEd.