Giving the outrage a name – how researchers are challenging employment conditions under the hashtags #IchBinHanna and #IchBinReyhan

Outraged by the release of a ministerial video in which short-term employment contracts in German academia were lauded through the embodiment of fictitious doctoral researcher Hanna, thousands of researchers rallied behind the hashtags #IchBinHanna & #IchBinReyhan to vent their frustrations about precarious academic employment in Germany. The emerging connective action attracted a comparatively large number of researchers in a short period of time, stayed active for over two years, elicited reactions from policymakers and the media, and influenced current legislative developments in Germany. We analyse the discourse of over 45,000 tweets related to the movement from its onset in June 2021 to March 2023. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines machine-learning, corpus-linguistic, and qualitative analysis methods, we aim to distil the factors that led to the movement’s considerable success. The fast growth of the movement was likely driven by the use of an easy-to-personalise action frame and the large variety of discussion topics, facilitating the involvement of different groups of academics across career levels and employment conditions. Our analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the discourse reveals largely positive, constructive, and active exchanges, in which many of the most salient keywords are lexical verbs. Our analyses offer an explanation for the continued involvement of many activists and the successful translation of solutions developed by the movement to news reports and proposed law amendments, despite an absence of coordination by any formal organisation.