ABSTRACT
How participants navigate hashtags and algorithms in their daily interactions with Instagram finds limited correspondence in existing scholarly literature on the subject. In this chapter, we describe hashtags, their development and how they work. After reviewing some of the principle thematics in the academic literature, the disjuncture with what we witnessed in our study becomes clear. Developing the concept of an optics of optimization to examine hashtags and how they work and are worked (or not) by participants in this study helps us situate discussions when discursive ruptures like the wholesale rejection of hashtags altogether occur.
