Special free Event: NEW RESEARCH Babywearing & Social Media

​ ​This research, conducted by University of British Columbia undergraduate student, Katherine Brand, and supervised by Dr. Christine Schreyer, provides an analysis of the language use in online babywearing communities.

From publicly available social media, such as Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, Katherine documented 173 main babywearing related hashtags, as well as over 600 secondary hashtags. She identified where hashtags illustrated boundaries of accessibility and inclusivity amongst community members, such as gendered uses.

Her analysis shows that the most frequently used hashtags were tied to the practice of babywearing, original babywearing hashtags, parent identity and types of carriers. In many cases multiple identities were indicated and this overlap provides insight into both individual and communal identity. As well, Katherine documented growth rates of hashtag use on social media platforms, which indicates, how the babywearing community is using social media and the types of hashtags used in these platforms.

These results will lead into future research about to the linguistic practices of online babywearing communities, including the development of a dictionary of babywearing terminology.