Our guest for this episode (19 min. long) is Brooke Foucault Welles. She recently co-authored the award-winning book, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Brooke studies how online communication networks enable and constrain behavior, with particular emphasis on how these networks both enhance and mitigate marginalization. 

During this conversation, Brooke talks about just exactly what “hashtag activism” means, especially in the context of web science, and about her research into specific hashtags beyond her book. She tells us how these hashtags can impact public discourse, validate online participants and form networks of people online. But she also discusses why the web can be a difficult space for activists and how web science can work to change that. Listen to learn about these topics and more!

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and click here for this episode’s show notes.