Understanding Participatory Hashtag Practices on Instagram: A Case Study of Weekend Hashtag Project.

Instagram, a popular global mobile photo-sharing platform, involves various user interactions centered on posting images accompanied by hashtags. Participatory hashtagging, one of these diverse tagging practices, has great potential to be a communication channel for various organizations and corporations that would like to interact with users on social media. In this paper, we aim to characterize participatory hashtagging behaviors on Instagram by conducting a case study of its representative hashtagging practice, the Weekend Hashtag Project, or #WHP. By conducting a user study using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we analyzed the way Instagram users respond to participation calls and identified factors that motivate users to take part in the project. Based on these findings, we provide design strategies for any interested parties to interact with users on social media.