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head: HASHTAG QUANTICO

Hashtag Quantico: Online Identity Ethnography Paper
Taking a Deeper Look at the Twitterverse
Elisabeth Teichner
Marist College

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Introduction
Three programmers from San Francisco who originally worked at a podcasting company
decided to band together and create a micro-blogging site, and so Twitter was born. Twitter has
two meanings one being, a short burst of inconsequential information and the other, a series
of chirps from birds (Johnson, 2013). With a name that stuck and a 140-character limit people
from all across the globe are able to update and share their statuses at any point of their day. This
platform also allows pictures, videos, and gifs to be posted along with the text. This can create
even more conversation and be the perfect environment for quick exchanges between accounts.
Twitter has changed the face of the social networking not only just by being able to see
what your friends are doing but has also made significant impacts on the political, sports, global
news, media, business worlds. Its mission is to give everyone the power to create and share
ideas and information instantly, without barriers (Twitter, 2015). Twitter allows for there to be
instant contact between thousands and even millions of people in a matter of seconds. This
platform allows anyone to become a journalist and share their thought, or beliefs about anything
they believe to be relevant. This type of instant contact between multiple individuals and entities
allows it to be an extremely conducive place for quick interactions and conversations to occur.
Methodology
The community that I chose to take a closer look at is the hashtag #Quantico. Quantico is
a TV program that just premiered this fall on ABC. I love watching new TV shows and I
thought it would be interesting to conduct an ethnography of this hashtag and analyze the
community more closely. I have found that, especially with TV, there are close communities of
people that emerge while talking about their mutual love or hatred for a certain program. I
started to look at the hashtag and the QuanticoTV account before the premiere on Sunday

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September 27th, to see what the community looked like before the night, then during, and after.
On September 22nd I looked at the hashtag for the first time and found that there was not too
many tweets from any accounts beside
the QuanticoTV account, which is run
by ABC. I then checked back a few
more times throughout the week, and
then on the 27th at 10pm I had Quantico
on the TV while watching closely at the
#Quantico. According to Postill and
Pink (2012), a social media ethnographer involves living part of ones life on the internet,
keeping up to date with and participating and collaborating in social media discussions. I
thought it was important that I was keeping up with the show throughout the hour so I could
better understand the Twitter conversations in the community. After the show was over and I
continued to track the hashtag for another hour or so to see how themes changed or if different
ones emerged. Periodically after the premiere I looked at the hashtag ever few days to see what
kind of activity was still occurring.
Findings
The first kind of activity that I found was the official QuanticoTV account sending out
tweets a few times a day. The 140 characters were taken up by proposing a game of two truths
and a lie to anyone using the hashtag Quantico or following the account. QuanticoTV sent out
tweets with videos of Priyanka Chopra, the star actress of the show, providing the community
with the three facts about each of her co-stars, and the twitter community had to reply saying
which they though was the lie all including the #Quantico. In my early stages of observation I

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noticed a good response from the community, replying frequently to the tweets as well as
sending out their own to their friends to try and start separate conversations. There were also
many tweets coming from other ABC network show accounts describing three facts about a
character on a show and having that audience play along and every tweet included the
#Quantico. One example of this was the Modern Family account played along and the responses
were both immediate and positive from people that may not have know what the show Quantico
was before this post, but now they are more inclined to check out the hashtag. This type of
interaction continued up until the premiere on the 27th. A lot of the tweets contained additional
media such as videos, pictures,
and gifs that were inviting. Also,
many responses to the tweets had
fun emojis such as the happy
smiley face, and the monkey
face. This was a way to generate
a strong buzz for the TV show
and create the community with
the hashtag #Quantico, before the
show has even aired.
Right before the premiere
occurred there were many tweets
being sent out in anticipation. People said they had just watched the premiere of Blood & Oil and
were now expressing their high hopes for this show. The tweets were coming in about four or
five per second, every time I refreshed my feed there were at least 50 tweets needing to be read.

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I was definitely surprised by the reaction in this community I did not realize it would be so
popular and cause such a significant reaction in a short span of time. Tweets commonly included
pictures and videos, or gifs of the star Priyanka Chopra, or of themselves watching the show at
home. The other hashtags that were often posted along with #Quantico were, #watching,
#bloodandoil, #risktaker, #power, and #strength. Also, many people tagged @priyankachopra,
and then complemented her on what a great job she was doing or how beautiful she looked
throughout different scenes. After 15 minutes had gone by #Quantico was the fourth trending
hashtag on Twitter, and the tweets were coming in around 20 or 30 per second. There was quite
a bit of conversation that was occurring, between the individuals on the social platform, but also
individuals tweeting in response to events that were happening on the show, or things that
characters were saying.
Within the first half hour #Quantico
was the third trending hashtag on
Twitter, behind #becausefootball and #superbloodmoon. The majority of the tweets were
positive; I only read a handful that had negative comments or saying that the show did not live
up to the hype. There was one scene that was quite shocking, a main character committed
suicide in front of the rest, and right when that happened the tweets started to flow in even faster
and the amount of emojis also went up. Many people used the sad, or shocked emoji face or put
a gif of a shocked person in their tweet.
As soon as the pilot ended tweets using the hashtag continued to come in, commenting on
certain scenes or what they did or did not love about the show overall. There were also a lot of
conversations between people about Priyanka Chopra, and how well she preformed and that this
is a step in the right direction for diversity on American television. The QuanticoTV account,

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along with others, were sending out the trailer for next weeks episode and using hashtags such as
#mindblown and #whoframedalex. At 11pm when the show had ended there were a total of
37.6k tweets that has been sent out. Tweets were coming in about 10 to 20 per second a couple
hours after the show ended on the east coast, because the western time zone was still waiting for
the shows premiere. In a TIME article by Steven Johnson (2009) he talks about how Twitter
[adds] a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been
a private exchange. Without the use of a platform such as Twitter this #Quantico conversation
would not be able to happen with people from all areas and backgrounds.
What Could Change
While I do believe Twitter is a conducive environment for communities like #Quantico,
there were certain aspects of the platform that could be altered for the better. For instance,
something I knew right from the start of the night was that because it was a football Sunday, and
the Super Blood Moon was occurring in the same night as the premiere there would be
competition for the number one
trending spot. With 500 million
tweets being sent out each day so
much is happening at one time. It can get overwhelming on your newsfeed and cause
competition between hashtags and people having to decide what they want to keep up with
during a certain span of time (Twitter, 2015). Having separate chat rooms and blogs that are
community specific could allow for even more conversation about the details of the show.
As a generation of instant gratification, Twitter is a great platform to be spewing out a
constant flow of information. However, this can be a negative when it comes to spoilers in TV
shows or movies. Twitter is a global platform that is consistent throughout time zones and

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countries, but TV programs are not. Quantico premiered 3 hours earlier in the Eastern Time
zone than in the Western Time zone. This means if a person living in California accidentally
logged on to Twitter and saw the hashtag or was following people watching in the Eastern Time
zone, they probably saw all kinds of spoilers about the show that they did not want to see. In
both these instances Twitter is almost over informative, and can spoil information or overwhelm
other individuals in the Twitterverse.
Conclusion
Overall I have found the ethnography I conducted on the community #Quantico to be
more interesting and entertaining that I first assumed. There were definitive themes that
emerged as continued to monitor the interaction between accounts on Twitter. I do believe that
Twitter is an appropriate platform to be used for a community such as this, with 77% of accounts
being from outside of the U.S people from all walks of life are able to join in on a conversations
in completely different countries (Twitter, 2015). I was glad that almost all of the tweets that
were sent out had positive and encouraging tones, with only a handful being negative. Although
there are aspects of Twitter as a social platform that could be altered, the overall micro-blogging
Twitterverse was beneficial to this #Quantico community.

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8
References

Johnson, M. (2013, January 23). The history of twitter. Retrieved from

http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/01/23/the-history-of-twitter/

Johnson, S. (2009, June 05). How twitter will change the way we live. TIME. Retrieved from
http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/johnson-time-2009.pdf

Twitter Company. (2015). Retrieved from https://about.twitter.com/company

Postill, J., & Pink, S. (2012). Social media ethnography: The digital researcher in a messy
web. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy. 145, 123-134.