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Abstract
Since the early 2000s the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit has increased significantly. So-called ‘social media activism’, where users use social media platforms to “[organize], [recruit], and [mobilize]” others for various causes, has become especially prevalent in recent years, especially on Twitter. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative techniques to examine a collection of 6,081 tweets collected during the summer of 2020 in order to investigate the discourse surrounding police brutality in the #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter hashtags, showing that both use language to frame real world events in a way that supports their worldview and seeks to gather support for their cause.