[Air-L] Twitter hashtags used without searching in mind

[Neil Sadler]

Hi everybody,

Has anyone come across any research looking at when hashtags are used on Twitter, apparently without having searchability in mind?

I'm thinking about when users employ hashtags (or create new ones) to be used in just a single tweet for rhetorical purposes and with no expectation that they will be searched for or that they will link in to a broader debate via the hashtag.

For example, the hashtag #toldyouso is used fairly often but it seems unlikely that users employing it have much expectation that other users will search for that hashtag for information about it. Rather, the focus seems to be on the rhetorical impact of the individual tweet in which it is used.

Any thoughts or recommendations for reading would be much appreciated!

Best,
Neil