The decade spanning 2012-2022 social media platforms, especially Twitter, created opportunities for historically excluded people and groups to platform their ideas and create meaningful social change. Research suggests that hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo profoundly shifted not only how we think about racial and gender justice in the United States, but also helped to usher in lasting policy and structural reform.

In this talk, Brooke Foucault Welles of Northeastern University will explore various mechanisms that allowed Twitter activism to be so successful and reflect on the continued capacity of social media for social change in a post-Twitter world.