Osorio "I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet"

This week's reading, Ruth Osorio's "I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet," illustrates the way in which hashtags can act as a rallying cry and a repository for online activism. Her essay explores this concept through topoi, which "can help rhetors generate novel arguments, circulate within and across borders, and adapt to new sources of knowledge" (2). She describes topoi as widely accepted commonplaces that can be reinforced, challenged, or flipped in order for an individual to make a point relating to the topoi's subject.

In the environmental justice movement, there are several topoi that commonly appear. One of the most common topoi - and one that is often challenged by the movement - is the idea that environmental issues affect everyone in the same way; in other words, nature is not selective. However, environmental justice aims to show that marginalized individuals and communities often bear the lion's share of environmental issues, whether that be because of proximity to industrial areas, pre-existing lack of resources, or inadequate access to a political voice.

Like the autistic activists in Osorio's essay, hashtags in the environmental justice movement are often used by those most affected. Osorio writes, "hashtags allow for rhetors - especially rhetors who have been denied a public platform - to collectively create, share, and build upon stories that are not represented in dominant culture" (9). Hashtags such as #flintwatercrisis and #jacksonwatercrisis, for example, create a sharing point for the marginalized residents of those areas to show the state of the water and how they are coping in a way that gains national attention.