Written by: Spencer Greenhalgh
Primary Source: Spencer Greenhalgh
Yesterday, I posted for the first time in French, which was kind of exciting for me but less exciting for those of you who don’t read French. The good news is that yesterday’s post was, in effect, a prelude to a series of posts I’ll be doing this week (in English) about a French Twitter hashtag. To keep things short, I’ll spend today’s post introducing the hashtag and then tell you what I’ve done with it over the next few days.
Like many Francophones and Francophiles, I was shocked and hurt by the 13 November terrorist attacks in Paris. I spent a lot of time following updates on Twitter to get a sense of what was going on and was fascinated to discover the hashtag #educattentats. The term is a pun on éducation and attentats, the French word for terrorist attack.
It’s hard to get excited about anything associated with such a tragic event, but it is nonetheless amazing to see how quickly and how powerfully Francophone teachers used this hashtag to rally together as an educational community and decide how they were going to respond to the tragedy.
Teachers and organizations began using the hashtag to…
…share resources and advice for how to talk to their students the next school day
Comment parler des attentats de Paris aux enfants ? https://t.co/Pvv9jrthwy #educattentats
— UNICEF France (@UNICEF_france) November 16, 2015
…reflect on the role of their profession in combating extremism
Parce qu’avec ce dessin, beaucoup de choses sont dites #ParisAttacks #educattentats pic.twitter.com/kD7FCUkFvV
— SophieSchiavone (@SophieSchiavone) November 16, 2015
…redirect attention to helpful tweets that didn’t initially use the hashtag
#educattentats #EcolepourlaPaix https://t.co/ma5T9BROGE
— Damien Dubreuil (@damdubreuil) November 16, 2015
…carry out in-class activities
#educattentats #Defiexpressgeo Donnez le nom de la plus grande ville d’Espagne qui s’est colorée aux couleurs de la France. @4CMatisse
— Collège La Vanlée (@BrehalUlis) November 27, 2015
… and even draw attention to the importance of digital and media literacies
Des outils pour vérifier les images qui circulent lors des crises. #educattentats https://t.co/3QFfxnx1Y4 pic.twitter.com/tWoZILgfno
— Outils Tice (@outilstice) November 19, 2015
Of course, as I mentioned last week, just as a hashtag affords a community a way to quickly and easily gather around a topic, it also affords other people with other agendas a quick and easy way to impose their own voice. I’ve—thankfully—only seen one example of this, which is distasteful enough that I’d rather not reproduce it here or link to it.
These tweets so impressed me that I immediately began collecting these tweets with a TAGS archiver. Since then, I’ve been able to explore a couple of interesting things with them, and over the next few days, I hope to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.
Latest posts by Spencer Greenhalgh (see all)
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- Star Wars and editing your writing - January 2, 2018