Furthermore, the hashtag connects people like other sites of memory do; however, social media provides a forum where it can be instantly accomplished and provides a setting where people can converse and share their thoughts with an entire community of individuals besides their friends and family. Hashtags are often accompanied in tweets and Instagram posts with a link to another website such as a YouTube video, online news article, etc. Hashtags, thus, become a portal to other forms of online memorialization, developing an interconnected online web of how we remember 9/11. For example, in Image 1, a daughter acknowledged the lingering pain she still experienced as she heard her mother’s name called. In her tweet, she uses “#September11” and provides a link to a tribute website, as seen in Image 2, that allows families to commemorate their loved ones. Such connectivity, in this case, brings a deeper identity to the name Joan D. Griffith. More than being a woman who died in the World Trade Center, she is a loving mother with relatives who miss her more every year. As I looked at this post, I was even connected to Joan D. Griffith. Once a resident of Willingboro, N.J., she lived approximately thirty minutes from my neighborhood. This post put an event that occurred over two hours away from me within miles of my home.
Another tweet I found with the same hashtag gave me a link to a commemorative YouTube Video. As powerful as the three-minute clip was, the comments struck me more. As seen in Image 3, the hashtag had led to place where individuals can honor their loved ones. Others, whether they are the general public searching for a way to aid the aching or individuals experiencing the same pain, could communicate these emotions to those coping as well.
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Furthermore, the connectivity of the hashtag, a site of memory, helps shape a truthful collective memory of the September 11th attacks. Jonathan Hyman, in reference to his photographs, writes, “The 9/11 artworks and memorials I photographed are part of a dynamic process of remembrance of the events of that fateful day and its immediate aftermath. So powerfully and abundantly present in public, they are now not only part of the history of the public memory of 9/11 but also inextricably connected to the changing history and interpretations of the attacks and our collective future” (Hyman, 74). Similarly, the public conversations created through the hashtag, like the artwork, enhance the understanding others develop about the event. For example, many individuals believed important political controversies surrounding September 11th, 2001 (debates about the war, the “Inside Job,” the presidency, etc.) were neglected in the remembrance of the event and that in order to sufficiently preserve the memory of such a disaster, the more complicated and tumultuous historical details, debates, and theories must be not masked. Hashtags, therefore, like “#Insidejob” give people the opportunity to voice their frustration with the government as seen in Images 4 and 5. Overall, the hashtag effectively connects and blends the emotions of families, friends, and strangers in response to loss and the emotions of individuals in response to political conflict to the present period. In doing so, all aspects of September 11th, 2001 are remembered, accessible and left to individuals to interpret and formulate opinions as to with which sides they agree.
Amongst all of this, the connectivity of the hashtag is most simply through Twitter and Instagram's functions to retweet and share posts. A friend, for example, can tweet a photo of a relative who died in the South Tower with the hashtag #AlwaysRemember. You could see this and retweet it, meaning that you have shared the post with all of your other online friends. If one of them is moved by the tweet, they can do the same, creating a chain reaction and a community of individuals who are working to always remember this relative. Social media, thus, reminds the members of the nation that we are not alone and can find support systems even through yes, a simple hashtag.