I was struck by how effectively Losh engages the mutability of hashtags in such a slim book. Although hashtags are often held as superficial markers meant to increase visibility online, her text shows how they are fraught and changing actors in our world. One of my favorite chapters was #PLACE. What begins with an anecdote about a trendy bar called Hashtag in Kiev, turns into a thorough discussion about the political history of Maidan Nezalezhnosti. The hashtag not only marks place, but intervenes and constitutes it as well. This capacity for constitution is itself both potentially banal and decisive, echoed in Losh’s reference to comparisons between the internet and the public square. The public square can be a site of leisure, of passing or a site of intentional assembly, complicity and dissent.
I was also interested in Losh’s brief discussion of the #PorteOuverte hashtag in Paris. This example demonstrates how the hashtag may not only intervene as a strategy for saving lives, but how such an intervention opens the door to risk. Marking a haven for those in danger also publicly announces the location as a target for violence. Moreover, as the author notes, #PorteOuverte was appropriated by well-intentioned users from abroad as a message of solidarity, hindering the utility of the tag.
The two other chapters that really stood out to me were #FILE and #METADATA. For me, saving the chapters on the organization of information itself for the very end of the book was an intriguing editorial choice. I liked how Losh relates the organization of data back to earlier practices of classification. It was fascinating when she discusses how even something as arbitrary and fundamental as the organization of the alphabet has political consequences. Furthermore, though I generally think of metadata as being exclusively tied to digital media, I thought it was compelling that Losh chose to connect its history to material practices of classification. She writes, “In other words, metadata has traditionally had a connection to the physical objects of the material world, whether they be wooden furniture or stuffed bird corpses. However, media theorist Catherine Hayles observes that information ‘lost its body’ after post-World War II cyberneticists substituted an abstracted pattern of signifiers that could be translated to any medium,” (122).
I was also interested in Losh’s brief discussion of the #PorteOuverte hashtag in Paris. This example demonstrates how the hashtag may not only intervene as a strategy for saving lives, but how such an intervention opens the door to risk. Marking a haven for those in danger also publicly announces the location as a target for violence. Moreover, as the author notes, #PorteOuverte was appropriated by well-intentioned users from abroad as a message of solidarity, hindering the utility of the tag.
The two other chapters that really stood out to me were #FILE and #METADATA. For me, saving the chapters on the organization of information itself for the very end of the book was an intriguing editorial choice. I liked how Losh relates the organization of data back to earlier practices of classification. It was fascinating when she discusses how even something as arbitrary and fundamental as the organization of the alphabet has political consequences. Furthermore, though I generally think of metadata as being exclusively tied to digital media, I thought it was compelling that Losh chose to connect its history to material practices of classification. She writes, “In other words, metadata has traditionally had a connection to the physical objects of the material world, whether they be wooden furniture or stuffed bird corpses. However, media theorist Catherine Hayles observes that information ‘lost its body’ after post-World War II cyberneticists substituted an abstracted pattern of signifiers that could be translated to any medium,” (122).
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