How to Write Tags for Critical Lens

Marxist and post-structuralist class analysis is one type of critical lens to use in analysis.

As students of continental philosophy and literary theory likely know, the term "critical lens" is a shorthand for using one of the schools of "high theory" for analysis. Lenses include post-structuralism, semiotics, feminist theory, post-colonial theory and Marxist theory. Tagging refers to the attachment of a keyword electronically to information or content for classification purposes. Unlike analog information taxonomy systems, tagging is not hierarchical and can be done by anyone. Writing blog tags and hashtags for content that uses critical lenses allows you to share your content with a larger audience by identifying the salient themes and key concepts.

Things You'll Need

• Content
• Access to the Internet

Instructions

Writing blog tags

1. Open an account on a platform that tags written content. Blogger and Wordpress are examples of platforms that use textual tagging for user-generated content.

2. Review existing tags on the platform to understand how they are used. Decide if any tags on existing content speak to your content (e.g. "critical theory"). If so, write down that tag.

3. Upload your written content that uses a critical lens. Create a title, and add images and hyperlinks. Save the entry.

4. Brainstorm content tags. For example, if the content focuses on a person, historical epoch, place or event, the name or place ("Foucault" or "Japan") are useful tags.

5. Click "insert tag" using the blog or platform program tools to add tags to your content. An entry may have as few as one tag and as many as 30 tags. Save and publish.

Writing hashtags

1. Open an account on Twitter, a social media platform that uses hashtags to sort entries. Hashtags are keywords prefixed by the hash sign. Scroll popular hashtags and review trending tags to understand how they are used.

2. Evaluate the content you have posted on the blog. Decide which aspect of the content to emphasize when posting the URL on Twitter. Write down your key message in less than 140 characters in the box under the words "What's Happening?" Keep your entry, or tweet, shorter than 140 characters since tags and hyperlinks count toward the total.

3. Decide which existing conversations you would like to contribute to on Twitter and select one or two hashtags to add, such as #Foucault and #japan.

4. Post the tweet, tags and hyperlink.

Tips & Warnings

• Repost the tweet and your tagged blog entries on Facebook or another social media site to increase exposure.

• Post regularly and comment on others' posts or tweets to build a social media community of users interested in critical theory and critical lenses.

References

• "Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction"; Jonathan Culler; 1997
• Cornell University Library; The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems; Scott Golder, Bernardo A. Huberman; 2005
• Twitter: What are Hashtags?