#BringBackOurGirls

About

#BringBackOurGirls is a Twitter hashtag campaign launched by a group of Nigerians to raise awareness and call upon the international community for action after nearly 300 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped by a jihadist terrorist group in April 2014.

Background

On April 15th, 2014, approximately 276 Nigerian female students were abducted by a group of armed militants from the Government Girls Secondary School^[1] in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. In the following days, Nigerian officials speculated that the Islamic jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram may have been behind the kidnappings and criticism of the Nigerian government’s inaction and Western media’s lack of coverage emerged. On April 23rd, the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was first tweeted out by lawyer Ibrahim M. Abdullahi^[9]and spread through Twitter users in Nigeria.^[8]

As of May 2014, at least 50 girls have reportedly escaped their kidnappers. On May 5th, the leader of Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the abductions in a video statement. As of May 4th, more than 40% of the hashtag activity came from the United States. As of May 6th, 2014, the hashtag^[3] has been tweeted out over 1.2 million times.

Notable Developments

Celebrity Tweets

On May 3rd, 2014, education and equality activist Malala tweeted a picture from her foundation's Twitter account^[3] of herself holding a sign with the hashtag. In less than a week the tweet gained over 4,000 retweets.

Other celebrities^[7] who tweeted out the hashtag include Hillary Clinton^[4], Kerry Washington^[5] and Mary J Blige.^[6]

News Media Coverage

On May 4th, Refinery29^[10] published a collection of Instagram images that used the hashtag. On May 5th ABC news published an article titled "Twitter Campaign #BringBackOurGirls Takes Off," which explored how the hashtag's popularity grew after celebrities tweeted it out. On May 6th, Buzzfeed^[11] published a post titled "The Nigerian School Girls Are Still Missing And International Outrage Is Rising," which collected many of the most powerful tweets which used the hashtag.

Misrepresentation

On May 7th, American photographer Ami Vitale discovered that photographs she took of girls back in 2000 while visiting a village in Guinea-Bissau, a West African country more than 2,200 miles away from Nigeria, were being misused in a number of promotional images for the hashtag campaign.

However, by the time she realized that her photographs were being misrepresented as images of Nigerian girls, they had been retweeted thousands of times, including celebrities like Chris Brown and even the BBC. That same day, Vitale^[12] tweeted:

imahephzibah THIS IMAGE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION! SHE IS NOT NIGERIAN AND HAS BEEN MISREPRESENTED TO USE FOR YOUR CAMPAIGN. TAKE DOWN!

— Ami Vitale (Amivee) May 7, 2014

On May 8th, the New York Times Lens Blog^[13] reported on the misrepresentation in a Q&A interview with the photographer, followed by the Washington Post's coverage of the story^[14] on the morning of May 9th.

Notable Examples

Michelle Obama

On May 7th, Michelle Obama tweeted a picture of herself holding up a sign with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls written on it, which garned more than 57,000 retweets and 34,000 favorites in less than a week. In the following days, Michelle Obama's #BringBackOurGirls sign became a popular subject of photoshopped parodies as a satirical commentary on the running trend of sign-holding campaigns within social media activism.

Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to #BringBackOurGirls. -mo pic.twitter.com/glDKDotJRt

— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) May 7, 2014

Ann Coulter's Response

On the following day, American conservative author Ann Coulter tweeted a parody of Michelle Obama's photograph with a sign which read #BringBackOurCountry. Coulter's mocking photograph was met with over 2,000 retweets and nearly 2,000 favorites, though not without its fair share of critical responses and backlash from others on Twitter.

My hashtag contribution to world affairs … pic.twitter.com/Wkb8ozYZFC

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 12, 2014

Within hours of the tweet, more than a dozen photoshopped parodies poking fun at Coulter's sign-holding photograph began to surface on Twitter, which were subsequently covered by Gawker, The Daily Dot, Talking Point Memo and Mediate, among other news outlets.

Anti-Drone Strike Campaign

Meanwhile, the critics of Obama administration's drone strike policy also jumped in on the hashtag meme with parodies of Michelle Obama's sign-holding photograph. On May 12th, BuzzFeed^[9] picked up on the anti-drone campaign.

#FutureForOurGirls

On March 8th, 2016, London-based anti-violence nongovernmental organization International Alert^[15], United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched #FutureForOurGirls^[16], a new hashtag campaign aimed at raising public awareness and support for the survivors of abduction by Boko Haram fighters, including the Nigerian schoolgirls from the village of Chibok who had been liberated since the mass abduction in May 2014. According to the statement issued by International Alert, many women and girls released from captivity, as well as the children of the survivors, whose fathers are believed to be Boko Haram fighters, face social stigmas, mistrust and hardships from their own communities upon returning home.

Search Interest

External References