#HereToStay: From #Hashtag to Political Campaign

• In Event: Race and Ethnic Politics in the Media and on the Internet

Abstract

This research is part of my dissertation project: “#HereToStay: United We Dream and Illegalized Immigrant Political Participation .” This dissertation chapter focuses on the undocumented immigrant-led organization, United We Dream (UWD), and its creation and use of hashtags for political campaigns, particularly UWD’s #HereToStay on Twitter. There is limited research within political participation and race/ethnicity politics literature on how marginalized groups like undocumented immigrants use social media as a platform for building political campaigns and challenging political public discourse. I study the development of UWD’s #HereToStay campaign by conducting qualitative coding of UWD tweets from 2012-2017. In particular, I conduct in-depth analysis of how UWD uses these tweets in 2014 (creation of the hashtag in response to GOP attacks on DACA’s expansion) to tweets in 2017 (hashtag becomes a political campaign/message in response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric/actions of the Trump Administration). I compliment this Twitter analysis with semi-structured interviews with UWD leaders and members, archival work, and participant observation research. My preliminary findings demonstrate the relationship between UWD’s use of social media (Twitter) and the organization’s political actions such as advocacy events and political campaigns. Through the #HereToStay campaign, UWD was not only able to coordinate political actions in response to the political environment, but insert into national public immigration discourse a firm political message that undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were “here to stay” and this is their home. As UWD states, “#HereToStay is a defiant message that this is our home, we’re a part of our communities and we aren’t going to be forced out.”

Author

• Jessica Taghvaiee, University of California, Irvine