[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto politics in a hashtag"

[rfmcdonald]

Spacing Toronto's Kat Eschner wrote about the genesis of the Twitter hashtag #topoli.

It was 2010. The G20 protests were in the news, and Rob Ford was running for mayor. Some of Toronto’s Twitter users took to the web to air their thoughts in 140 characters that included the new hashtag #TOpoli[.]

In the past year, from May 5, 2014 to May 4, 2015, more than 1.7 million tweets and retweets used that hashtag. But as the first ten tweets that used the hashtag show, it wasn’t a big success right off the bat. Though it was first used in June 2010, it didn’t really take off until October 25[.]

That’s when Jean-Pierre (JP) Boutros proposed changing from #VoteTO to a hashtag that more closely mirrored provincial hashtag #onpoli. “I just threw it out there,” he said. Boutros went on to work for Councillor Karen Stintz and run for council himself in 2o14. He thinks the hashtag took off because Toronto spent the four-plus years that followed in such preoccupation with municipal politics. But now that Rob Ford’s polarizing mayoralty is over, Boutros thinks there’s less interest in #TOpoli.