Topics

Topics

What are topics and why are they important?

Topics are the keywords circulating in the HASTAC community. They have been implemented throughout the site to organize content to encourage organic exploration and discovery of thematic content. Topic assignments will be used to “file” your content for discovery by others elsewhere on the site. It relates your content to a larger discussion in a meaningful way and makes your content more discoverable to the larger HASTAC community.

How do they work?

Whenever you post any content to the site—whether it is a blog, forum post, event, announcement, or news item, etc.—you will be asked tocategorize your content by selecting related topics from an established, predefined list. These topics range from top-level,  broad overarching categories to more granular, nuanced sub-topics. You can assign any number of topics to a piece of content. Please note that while all topics assigned to a piece of content  will be saved in the database, in the interest of space,  some top level displays will only show five topics.

How can I use topics to find content that might interest me?

On the "topics" landing page (accessible from the primary navigation bar), you can browse content by topics. Additionally, from anywhere in the site, on any piece of content, you can click on the topics listed to drill down and see any other content across the HASTAC site that shares that topic. Topics are also used in the search algorithm to surface content.

What topics can I select?

Topics are divided into six high-level, overarching topics (academia, community & policy, culture, technology, multimedia, HASTAC), as well as more granular sub-topics. Select the top level topics to give the broadest categorization to your content and/or select from more granular sub-topics. Regardless of whether they are selected, your content will be organized into the relevant top-level categorization for display on the topics landing page based on the sub-topics chosen. For example, if you were to choose "Arts and Humanities" as a sub-topic, your content would be surfaced under "Academia" on the topics landing page.