In recent years, social media have become a common way for political groups and social movements to organize.

As per pew research, On Twitter’s 10-year anniversary, the site published a list of the most used hashtags related to social causes. Two of the top three were directly related to issues of race. According to Twitter, #Ferguson was the most used social-issue hashtag in the 10-year history of the platform, while #BlackLivesMatter was third.

Hashtags began as an informal way of emphasising ideas in unformatted text and attempting to build debate around a particular issue. In 2009, Twitter began linking and compiling hashtags, making them more searchable and useful as identifiers. While most hashtags emerge naturally, certain organisations employ hashtags to promote a message.

As the topic of police use of force received national attention in mid-2014 as a result of numerous high-profile cases involving black men, some activists advocated hashtags as a way to identify their messages and show solidarity.

The Black Lives Matter movement was an example of this. Black Lives Matter organisers made social media, notably the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, a central part of their strategy.

As a result, the growth of the movement offline was directly linked with the online conversation.