Stan Wars: the rise of a new army

Hashtag hijacking is a phenomenon arised in social media that consists in using hashtag for a different purpose than the one originally intended. After George Floyd's death due to police brutality, this practice started to spread ever more on social media, especially supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The advocates of the hijacks are mainly K-pop stan groups, who exploited their size and their visibility to influence many hashtags’ trend. Stan groups are made up by people who greatly admire a singer or a band, to an extent that is unusual. Recently, they strongly influenced many events, turning their individual actions into a collective movement of digital activism. The project aims to analyze this phenomenon of stan groups’ online activism in its complexity, trying to provide different points of view about it. How is it perceived by the media and the public? What kind of contents do they share during the hijacks they take part in? What are the political, social and cultural issues in which they are involved and that they support the most with their actions? The answers to these questions seek to shed light on one of the most active protest movements in the past decade, born and developed exclusively on the web, and that is destined to grow exponentially in the future. Will stan wars dramatically change the balance between the forces on the web?