Story highlights

Ferguson shooting prompts #IGotTheTalk trend

Minorities on social media share being told how to behave with police

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was killed by police while unarmed

Authorities say shooting came after a convenience-store robbery

CNN  — 

If you’re African-American, you might have gotten “the talk.”

It’s a discussion, usually with parents, about how they need to behave around police officers because of the color of their skin.

On social media, many African-American users have used the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to share their stories about “the talk.”

On Twitter and Facebook, the hashtags #IGotTheTalk and #IGaveTheTalk have been trending topics since the shooting on Saturday. In the posts, users recount being taught,

“Me and my brothers literally had to rehearse talking to the cops w/ my parents,” wrote a Twitter user with the screen name @HeDoinTooMuch.

Other tweets have included:

.

The Ferguson shooting has played out in a big way on sites like Twitter, where information spreads at lightning speed.

Full coverage: Ferguson shooting

News of two journalists being arrested while covering the aftermath of the shooting went viral on social media Wednesday, focusing attention on what some in the town have compared to a war zone.

And on Twitter and elsewhere, the “hacktivist” group Anonymous was working to expose the name of the officer who shot Brown before police revealed his identity on Friday.

In a related viral trend this week, students and other social media users – many of them black – shared images of themselves with their hands up in the air.

At Howard University, students at a back-to-school housing meeting posted a photograph in which hundreds stood in the “hands up” position, which witnesses say Brown had done to show he was unarmed before he was shot.

In a Facebook post Thursday, the historically black university in Washington said that it was “proud of our students who have united peacefully to show they will not stand for the senseless violence anymore. Thank you to the Howard University Student Association for leading and organizing this display of solidarity.”

Complete coverage of the Ferguson shooting and protests