Fast Facts:

• Boko Haram is a radical Islamist terrorist group from Nigeria that vehemently opposes Western culture and secular education. They recently made headlines by kidnapping over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls.
• Hoping to raise awareness and rescue the kidnapped girls, activists starting using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, eventually getting it trending.
• Critics blasted the campaign for its ineffectiveness, especially after First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted the hashtag.
• This has spurred debate over the effectiveness of online “hashtag activism.”
• This debate centers around how much weight a tweet carries, as well as the importance of raising awareness verse the importance of trying to remedy a problem