Giving the outrage a name – how researchers are challenging employment conditions under the hashtags #IchBinHanna and #IchBinReyhan

Abstract

Outraged by the release of a ministerial video, in which short-term employment contracts inGerman academia were lauded through the embodiment of fictitious doctoral researcherHanna, thousands of researchers rallied behind the hashtag #IchBinHanna to vent theirfrustrations about precarious academic employment in Germany. We explore the discourseof over 45,000 tweets featuring the hashtags #IchBinHanna and/or #IchBinReyhan from theoutset of the movement in June 2021 to March 2023. We use a mixed-methods approach,combining machine-learning, corpus-linguistics, and qualitative methods to gain a deepunderstanding of collective and individual struggles. Comparing the movement to similar,preceding ones, we find that #IchBinHanna and #IchBinReyhan reached a substantiallylarger and broader audience. We show how the movement exhibits remarkable tenacity,re-igniting multiple times, and influencing offline events such as parliamentary debates andamendments to labour laws. In addition to describing the topics discussed in both Germanand English-language tweets, we also detail when issues were raised, and by which groupsof actors. Our analysis exemplifies the potency of social media platforms for fosteringtransformation, demonstrating how hashtag activism can sustain widespread interest both onand beyond social media and exert substantial influence on policy-making processes.