A hashtag is a type of label or metadata tag primarily used on social networking websites and microblogging services. It makes it easier for users to find content of the same topic. Hashtags are created by inserting the hash character (#) in front of a word or unspaced phrase. The tagging system was initially popularized by Twitter, and later taken over by Instagram, Facebook and other social networking websites as well. Now hashtags are used in e-mails, internet forums, instant messaging and they even appear in spoken conversations. The expression itself has not only become a verbalized form in orality but has also triggered changes in nonverbal communication: sometimes people are actually making the hashtag sign with their hands (using the index and middle fingers from both laid over each other) rather than saying 'hashtag'. Searching on a hashtagged word on a social networking website will display all content so labelled on that website. Due to this sorting and searching function, hashtags have become a common tool for social activism. Here are a few examples: #gastro, #swag ('cool'), #sundaymorning; #bestoftheday, #picoftheday, #worstnightmare, #firstworldproblem, #bringbackourgirls, #grexit.

The presentation aims to examine the relationship between image and text (e.g. Instagram photo and hashtag) on the examples #time, #truth, #tradition in the light of Wittgenstein's following thought: „Now when we proposed to give the aspects of a drawing names, we made it appear that by seeing the drawing in two different ways, and each time saying something, we had done more than performing just this uninteresting action; whereas we now see that it is the usage of the 'name' and in fact the detail of this usage which gives the naming its peculiar significance".