The online residents of the Hamilton Twittersphere have adopted the hashtag #HamOnt (a combination of Hamilton, Ontario) to represent their city in all matters discussed on Twitter—from pride-laden tributes to rallying support for another cause—engaging the people of #HamOnt in politics and ultimately strengthening their communities. For some residents of Hamilton, civic engagement has always been important; city councillor Sam Merulla feels that "It's always been high. For those that are engaged, [they] are engaged on steroids." [8] It's only natural then, that these engaged residents of Hamilton would move their debate online to forums like Twitter.
Footnote 05The European Business Review (May - June 2009) reported that "[a] major success factor was how Obama’s campaign used social media and technology as an integral part of its strategy, to raise money, and, more importantly, to develop a groundswell of empowered volunteers who felt they could make a difference." and Monte Lutz, SVP-Digital Public Affairs of Edelman publications claimed that "Barack Obama won the presidency in a landslide victory (by a margin of nearly 200 electoral votes and 8.5 million popular votes) by converting everyday people into engaged and empowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online video."Twitter was becoming a popular forum for politics in 2009, not just in Hamilton but around the world. Twitter reported a 1400% increase in the number of tweets posted in 2009 [16], and 44% of the total Twitter population had signed up between January 2009 and August 2010 [4], suggesting it was reaching critical mass. Twitter was also receiving recognition for its role in events like the 2009 protest in Moldova, where 10,000 protestors successfully organized a rally through Twitter. The US State Department even asked Twitter to defer scheduled maintenance in an effort to avoid interfering with the organization of the June 2009 Tehran student protests. In North America, critics were citing the successful election of Barack Obama to his campaign's social media savvy [footnote 05], and a PEW report cited that "22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in [the] 2010 campaign" [11].
Footnote 06The decision-making process occurred right before a municipal election and was therefore under extra scrutiny by the city's residents.Hamilton, too, was getting involved with Twitter and politics. An "ad hoc group of young professionals committed to city core revitalization" [13] started an advocacy web site, "Our City, Our Future" which included a (now-defunct) Twitter account to rally support for a stadium to be built near Hamilton's West harbour and had nearly 3,500 supporters for the cause. The stadium debate focused on where a new venue for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats CFL team, and the 2015 Pan Am games would be built. The city and the Tiger-Cats had differing opinions of where to build the new sports complex—one popular option being Hamilton's west harbour. The Hamilton Spectator, the city's daily newspaper, reported that it would be live-tweeting the stadium debate during city council meetings [footnote 06] and, further, suggested that readers follow Joey Coleman, a local independent reporter who would also be covering the meeting via Twitter [12]. As Justin Jones, Yes We Cannon co-organizer, notes "Its an interesting trend in Ontario, and in Canada, where you're seeing voter turnout declining and people kinda starting to tune out politics, on Twitter it seems like its actually turning the opposite." [5]
Footnote 07This was the author's first experience with Twitter and politics, as well as Raise the Hammer's editor, Ryan McGreal's, "most organized and coordinated movement... in a central capacity".Footnote 08Twitter sign-up among survey respondents was the highest in 2009, at 22.5%, and continued strong (18.75%) in 2010.The West Harbour Stadium debate marked the beginning of a sea change for politics in Hamilton [footnote 07] as Twitter gained popularity among civically-minded Hamiltonians. [footnote 08] Since 2009, the city has seen several issues debated on Twitter, including light rail transit, two-way walkable streets, and even whether a local business owner should remove a confederate flag from his storefront. In the fall of 2012, Hamiltonians debated an Ontario Lottery and Gaming-funded casino in the downtown core. Protesters used Twitter to organize a rally at city hall before a council meeting to discuss the casino. The meeting resulted in a "crowd of about 400" from both sides of the debate that "packed into the cramped council chambers and spilled into the foyer" [3], a scene which is extremely rare at city hall.
In 2013, Hamilton saw two particular movements in which Twitter played a central role: the Dialogue Partners fiasco (commonly known as #tellOHEverything), an online campaign to have a city-hired PR firm contract terminated, and Yes We Cannon, a campaign to have bike lanes added to Cannon Street by 2015. A prominent blog on civic issues in Hamilton, Raise the Hammer, noted that “Yes We Cannon made strategic use of social media - both Facebook and Twitter - to reach a wide audience in a short amount of time.” CBC Hamilton claimed that protesters involved in ousting Dialogue Partners “[made] the city of Hamilton reconsider how it represents itself on social media. And they did it all on Twitter”. These case studies are important examples of recent successful political movements in Hamilton that highlight the potential effectiveness of slacktivism, the limitations of the digital divide, and the impact activism can have on community. A detailed history of both cases is provided to contextualize the analysis of survey data and the arguments laid out in this paper.
The Dialogue Partners fiasco began on January 7, 2013, when the City of Hamilton announced the campaign, Our Voice, Our Hamilton, which aimed to engage Hamiltonians in a discussion about the city's $195 million annual infrastructure deficit and how to deal with future public services. The campaign was managed by the Ottawa-based engagement firm, Dialogue Partners.
That evening, a tweet to the @OurHamilton Twitter account was sent, recommending "[t]he continuation of voluntary pay for disabled on the HSR". Dialogue Partners responded asking "what is 'HSR' just so we can accurately capture your comment". The initials HSR stand for "Hamilton Street Railway", the city's public transit system, and the Hamilton Twitter community interpreted the innocuous tweet as evidence that Dialogue Partners was ill-informed about local culture and was incapable of managing the Our Voice, Our Hamilton campaign. An immediate barrage of angry tweets were sent in reply to the @OurHamilton tweet. This anger grew from the fact that the city was not only asking for help managing a massive annual deficit, while simultaneously spending $376,000 on a consulting firm, but also that the money was leaving the city, going to an Ottawa firm that appeared to lack sufficient knowledge about the city of Hamilton. As Raise the Hammer editor, Ryan McGreal, put it: "It was kind of outrageous that they were supposed be engaging Hamiltonians and didn't seem to know anything about Hamilton." [7]
What grew from that ill-fated message was a "spontaneous movement that sprang up because one person said just the right thing and posted it to Twitter at the right moment. And it was witty and pithy and caught people's attention" [7]. A tweet suggesting that Hamilton Twitter users share details about Hamilton with Dialogue Partners via #TellOHEverything was posted, and within 45 minutes, the hashtag was trending nationally [2].
The #TellOHEverything hashtag was an homage to the #TellVicEverything hashtag that had been created in response to a House of Commons bill (Bill C34), sponsored by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, which presented a potential loss of privacy to Canadian Internet users. The #TellOHEverything campaign saw a total of 607 contributors posting a total 2898 tweets, most of these messages within the first 24 hours. Even Dialogue Partners had to admit that things had "gone really wrong, really fast" [9]. Dialogue Partners apologized less than 24 hours after the fiasco began, but the apology fell on deaf ears, as more tweets under the #tellOHEverything hashtag continued to flood the @OurHamilton account.
The @OurHamilton account did have its supporters, despite the large backlash to their regrettable tweet. Tweets in support acknowledged the misstep, but encouraged others to move past the blunder in the hope that the engagement efforts would continue, and hopefully create positive change for the city. Supporters compared the #tellOHEverything posters to "a bunch of jocks ganging up on a rival high school team" and even as far as suggesting that the campaign was a "public lynching" [9].
Two days after the Our Voice, Our Hamilton campaign began, Dialogue Partners shut down the project's web site at the request of the city because of "offensive and inaccurate content." The city was concerned about malicious code that had been added to the site. Dialogue Partners also unpublished their Facebook page. Finally, all dialogue stopped from the Our Voice, Our Hamilton campaign, again at the request of the city. City council unanimously agreed to cancel the contract with Dialogue Partners, even though several councillors expressed sympathy for the situation the firm had encountered. Councillor Lloyd Ferguson told CBC Hamilton, "I feel bad for Dialogue Partners. Some of the social media people were harsh," and Councillor Scott Duvall felt that the situation "just spun out of control" [10].
CBC Hamilton wrote: "It took just over 600 people to push an experienced communications firm to the brink and make the city of Hamilton reconsider how it represents itself on social media. And they did it all on Twitter." [1] The significance of the event was that "a community self-organizing in an organic way to push for change" [7] could cripple a firm which specializes in social media communication and convince city hall to cancel a $376,000 contract, all online via Twitter.
In May 2013, the Yes We Cannon campaign to "create a bi-directional bike lane, running the full length of Cannon Street, by 2015" [15] in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada was officially launched online. The campaign was created "to give downtown Hamilton something they could say 'yes' to" [5], and Twitter played a significant role in the success of the campaign. The awareness created through Twitter and other social media platforms, like Facebook, brought in over 500 signatures to the online petition within the first 24 hours. The initial support was impressive, but a councillor representing a ward impacted by the new bike lanes told media that while he was in support of the plan and had heard from supporters, he had also heard from "residents enraged by the plan" [14].
Yes We Cannon urged council to build a two-way cycle track (a physically separated bike path) on Cannon Street by July 2015, in time for the city to host 32 soccer matches for the Pan Am games. Organizers chose Cannon Street for their campaign because Hamilton needed an active transportation route between the forthcoming James Street GO station and the Pan Am games stadium (Tim Horton's field, formerly Ivor Wynne stadium). The Cannon Street cycle track will not only prove beneficial to Pan Am spectators (especially given the new bike share program in Hamilton), but it will also benefit commuters when all-day train service starts at the new GO station in 2015.
Cannon Street is listed as a priority in the city of Hamilton's Shifting Gears Bicycle Master Plan and is slated for resurfacing during construction of the Pan Am stadium. Given these facts, and the fact that Cannon is generally recognized as an under-utilized roadway in the city, Yes We Cannon organizers felt it was the ideal roadway to endorse for their campaign.
Three months after the campaign began, a motion for council to approve "a bi-directional bike lane [to] be installed as a pilot project on the south side of Cannon Street from Sherman Avenue to Bay Street" [6] was put forward.
On March 19, 2014 the motion for the Cannon Street pilot project, at an estimated total cost of $1.6 million, was unanimously approved by council, despite concerns from some members of council regarding a lack of public consultation. Councillor Brad Clark put forward a motion to include a 30-day public consultation, but was defeated in a vote of 10-3.
Continue reading: Literature Review