NEW ZEALANDERS EXPRESS SOLIDARITY THROUGH #HEADSCARFFORHARMONY MOVEMENT

On the day following the Christchurch attack, a touching photo of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern dressed in a hijab in a meeting with Christchurch's Muslim community went viral on social media and was shared countless times on Twitter. The photo sparked a fullfledged movement of local women wearing headscarves to show their support for the Muslim community and express solidarity with the victims in the wake of the massacre. The social movement took shape under the hashtag #Headscarfforharmony, which currently has its own Instagram account/event of the same name [@headscarforharmony]. This positive social media action comes to directly counter that of the gunman’s gruesome live-stream of the massacre. We can see how one viral photo was enough to stir an entire online/offline movement, just like what we saw last year and the year before with the global #Metoo movement, which was initially born out of a tweet.