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PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON TWITTER

AND INSTAGRAM: The Mactaquac Dam, New Brunswick, and the Site C Dam proposal, British

Columbia

Yan Chen

2015

Contents

Social Media and Public Discourse ............................................................................................ 2

Twitter and Instagram ............................................................................................................... 3

Study Cases ................................................................................................................................ 3

Data Collection and Analysis ...................................................................................................... 4

Results ........................................................................................................................................ 4

Total posts and average posts ........................................................................................... 4

Twitter and Instagram traffic ............................................................................................. 6

Keyword analysis ................................................................................................................ 8

Theme coding ................................................................................................................... 13

Big Players on Twitter and Instagram .............................................................................. 18

Network Analysis ............................................................................................................. 19

“Mactaquac” on Twitter .......................................................................................... 20

“SiteC” on Twitter .................................................................................................... 22

“Mactauqac” on Instagram ...................................................................................... 24

“SiteC” on Instagram ................................................................................................ 25

Discussion................................................................................................................................. 27

References ............................................................................................................................... 29

Appendix A: Twitter and Instagram Traffic .............................................................................. 33

Appendix B: News list .............................................................................................................. 35

Mactaquac ....................................................................................................................... 35

Site C ................................................................................................................................ 36

Appendix C: Coding themes (Categories) ................................................................................ 39

This report was completed based on the author’s research assistant work from 2014 to 2015

with the SSHRC-funded project Energy Transition in Canada during her Master of

Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University.

For enquiries, please contact her supervisor Dr. Kate Sherren at kate.sherren@dal.ca

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Social Media and Public Discourse

Social media, “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and

technological foundations of Web 2.01, and that allow the creation and exchange of User

Generated Content” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, p. 61), has become one of the most

popular ways for social communication. Based on the Internet, social media has strengths

such as carrying a massive volume of information (Cochran, Kao, Gusani, Suliburk &

Nwomeh, 2014; Gruber, Smerek, Thomas-Hunt & James, 2015), providing multiple channels

for communication (Lassen & Brown, 2010), extending to available audiences all around the

world (Cochran et al., 2014), realizing real-time connections (Gerber, 2014; Gruber et al.,

2015), offering various services (Kwon, Park & Kim, 2014), charging low cost for

communications (Lassen & Brown, 2010; Gerber, 2014), and providing precise spatial

coordinates (Purohit et al., 2013; Gerber, 2014).

These strengths have enabled modern society to establish and maintain high-speed and

effective social networks. Despite the wide use of social media in people’s private lives, it

also shows a great potential as a new channel for citizens’ public participation. The most

widely applied area is politics, where social media has become the tool for people to seek

political information, election updates, and candidates’ news (Smith, 2014). Recently, many

researchers have studied the use of social media for crisis management, such as the case of

the Oklahoma Grass Fires of April 2009 and the Red River Floods in March and April 2009

(Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird & Palen, 2010). This study shows that real-time discussions on

social media about the situation on the ground can help the public and the rescue team to

obtain useful information. Besides, a little research also studies the use of social media on

public topics such as criminal issues, public health care, education, and other current affairs

(Joseph et al., 2015; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2014).

Regarding the area of environmental issues and resource management, the existing relevant

research is insufficient. There are some pioneering studies showing the capacity of using

social media to enhance public discussion and to collect public opinions. For example,

during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, researchers analyzed relevant tweets and

found people most concerned about health impacts and many observers wanting to report

first-hand news on the ground (Starbird et al., 2014). In the specific area of energy, Autry

and Kelly (2012) conducted a study on the merging of Duke Energy and Progress Energy in

US. The results indicate that social media (i.e. Twitter) is an ideal tool for disseminating

newsworthy information. Although these studies indicate a promising application of social

media in public participation in environment and resource management, current research

has not shown significant progress in this area.

1 Web 2.0, defined by Tim O’Reilly (2007, p.17), is “the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation,’ and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences”.

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This study aims to explore the use of social media, specifically Twitter and Instagram, for

public discourse about two hydro energy projects, the Mactaquac Dam, New Brunswick, and

the Site C Dam proposal, British Columbia. This study will analyze the practices of Twitter

and Instagram as new tools for public participation and the differences between Twitter use

and Instagram use related to people’s online behavior, opinion leaders, information

aggregation and dissemination, the most frequent themes, various online tones, and social

networks. The results will help understand the feasibility and effectiveness of Twitter and

Instagram as platforms for public discourse on energy projects.

Twitter and Instagram

There are different types of social media platforms, such as social networking sites (e.g.,

Facebook and MySpace), blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g.,

YouTube, Flickr, and Instagram), and so on (boyd & Ellison, 2008; Kaplan and Haenlein,

2010). Academia has not yet agreed on how to classify these platforms. The typologies that

do exist have become irrelevant as the sites have converged in terms of functionality.

Twitter, as a microblog platform, was born in 2006. Its users are allowed to post ‘tweets’

which can contain text, photos, videos, and outside web URLs in real time (Twitter, 2015). A

tweet has a maximum of 140 characters. Individuals, organizations, and companies can

create Twitter accounts on this platform. Twitter has 302 million monthly active users and

500 million tweets being sent per day (Twitter, 2015).

Compared with Twitter, Instagram is a burgeoning social media site where users mainly

share photos and videos with each other. Users are able to create text-based descriptions

about the photos or videos. The description for each post has 2200-character and 30-

hashtag limits. Instagram was established in 2010, 4 years later than Twitter. In 2014, it had

182 million users and 58 million photos uploaded per day (Statistic Brain, 2014).

Each of the two sites allows users to establish multiple social connections within their social

networks. The most popular connections are achieved by following, retweeting (reposting

on Instagram), replying (commenting), mentioning, favoriting (liking), and hashtags. The

major difference between Twitter and Instagram is the basic form of its post, text-based for

Twitter and photo- or video-based for Instagram. According to Kozinets, there is another

palpable difference that Twitter users are more likely to satisfy other users’ superficial and

short-time online needs; while Instagram users mainly focus on the post content itself so

that they may not lead to deep engagement with other users (Kozinets, 2015).

Study Cases

The Mactaquac Dam, New Brunswick, operated by NB Power, has the capacity of generating

668 MW of renewable energy (Keilty, Sherren, Beckley & Marmura, 2014). Since its

construction in the 1960s, the landscape in that area has been changed. The greatest extent

of flooding was caused by the Mactaquac generating station, resulting in the Headpond

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reservoir (Jacques Whitford, 2004). This has brought about controversial discussions

because the project was approved by government despite knowledge that it would have a

tremendous negative impact on the river and the environment (Canadian Rivers Institute,

2011). Many riparian residents lost their houses and land. 50 years later, the Mactaquac

Dam is currently facing another choice due to the coming end of its service in 2030. There

are three options for its future: first, repowering the dam; second, retiring the dam but

retaining the Headpond reservoir; last, removing the dam and restoring the river (New

Brunswick Power, n.d.). All of these options trigger public discussion about economic

concerns, environmental impacts, and other social issues.

Compared with the situation of the Mactaquac Dam, the proposed Site C Dam project is

somewhat different. The Site C Dam will become a new dam in the Peace River catchment,

which may flood about 3000 hectares of fertile, low-lying farmland under the reservoir

(Hume, 2014). The environmental assessment of the Site C was approved by the Province of

B.C. on December 16, 2014 and its construction was expected to begin in the summer of

2015 (BC Hydro, n.d.). However, The Joint Review Panel published their report on BC

Hydro’s environmental impact statement about the Site C Dam. It revealed that the effect of

the project on the landscape would be a significant adverse effect which would be

irreversible (BC Hydro & Power Authority British Columbia, 2014). This has caused heated

discussions and local stresses. In early July, 2015, BC Hydro issued the construction

notification letters for the Site C to aboriginal communities and regional governments,

attached with an overview of its 10-years schedule (BC Hydro, 2015).

Data Collection and Analysis

Netlytic (2015), a cloud-based text and social networks analyzer that can automatically

collect and summarize data from conversations on social media sites, was used to collect

Twitter tweets and Instagram posts with the specific hashtags or keywords, “Mactaquac” or

“SiteC”, from October 2, 2014 to July 1, 2015. The raw data includes links of tweets and

Instagram posts, publication dates, users’ names, contents, and sources (only for Twitter).

Microsoft Excel was used for data processing. Nvivo was used to code relevant themes for

Twitter and Instagram text-based contents. Netlytic was used to count the frequency of

keywords and analyze social networks.

Results

Total posts and average posts

From October 2, 2014 to July 1, 2015, 1,837 tweets (including original tweets, retweets, and

replies) and 1,744 Instagram posts (including original posts, reposts, and comments)

containing “Mactaquac” as hashtag or keyword, and 19,437 tweets and 870 Instagram posts

containing “SiteC” were collected by Netlytic (Figure 1). The volumes of tweets and

Instagram posts about Mactaquac are nearly the same. Since Instagram has less active users

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and a lower volume of everyday posts than Twitter, the relevant discussion about

“Mactaquac” on Instagram is more active than that on Twitter. As to the “SiteC”, Twitter

had a much larger volume of information than Instagram. Even considering the difference

between these two platforms, relevant discussion about “SiteC” is more active on Twitter

than on Instagram. Generally speaking, the volume of information on Twitter about

“Mactaquac” and “SiteC” is larger than that on Instagram.

Figure 1: Total numbers of tweets and Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac” or “SiteC” as hashtags or

keywords (October 2, 2014 – July 1, 2015)

The numbers of average tweets and Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac” per user per

month are similar, fluctuating within a narrow range around 2 (Figure 2). The average

Instagram posts per user containing “SiteC” is also slightly up and down between 1.3 and

2.3. However, the number of average tweets containing “SiteC” has a wide-range

fluctuation, from 2.0 to 5.3. Comparing the highest average 5.3 tweets containing “SiteC” in

February 2015, and the lowest 2.0 in November 2014, this huge difference was caused by

extreme activity of Twitter big players because the number of Twitter users was actually less

in February than in November. In February 2015, Twitter user @ConnectingTrue posted 922

tweets, including original tweets, retweets, and comments. Another user @kooter4469

posted 197 tweets. In November 2014, the biggest Twitter user @warrenbrazier only posted

39 tweets in total. The changes of average Instagram posts were caused by the same

reason. However, the tweets containing “Mactaquac” were different. The increase in

average tweets in January 2015 was caused both by the active big Twitter player

@mossman_peter and the moderate activity of many other Twitter users.

1837

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Figure 2: Average tweets and Instagram posts by per user per month (Appendix A shows more details)

Twitter and Instagram traffic

This study traced Twitter and Instagram traffic weekly from October 2, 2014 to July 1, 2015

(Week 1 to Week 39). The traffic volumes were compared with the timeline of relevant

publishing news on the main media, including CBC News and The Globe and Mail, the official

websites of the Mactaquac project and the Site C project, and so on (Appendix B provides

the list of News titles and sources). The results help to understand whether the changes of

Twitter and Instagram traffic volumes were related to the activity of the main media and

relevant official websites.

Figure 3 shows that the Twitter traffic of “Mactaquac” and the Instagram traffic were not

synchronous, which means had peaks and valleys at different times. The volume of

Instagram posts had two high spots in week 14 and week 36. However, the volume of

tweets rose to the top in week 17 and the second highest in week 8. Compared with the

timing of publishing news on the main media and relevant official websites, Twitter traffic

had a more matching fluctuation, climbing to peaks when relevant news came out.

However, sometimes there were delays between the news publishing on the main media

and its dissemination on Twitter.

0.0

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02-Oct-14 NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY 01-Jul-15

Twitter-"Mactaquac" Twitter-"SiteC" Instagram-"Mactaquac" Instagram-"SiteC"

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Figure 3: Twitter and Instagram traffic of "Mactaquac", from date to date

The Twitter traffic of “SiteC” is similar with that of “Mactaquac” which had peaks when

relevant news was published. However, it was not exactly the case every time when news

came out. For example, though there were four pieces of relevant news published from

week 34 to week 36, the Twitter traffic went down from above 600 tweets per week to only

243 tweets (Figure 4). On Instagram, the traffic volume of “SiteC” was quite small if

compared with that on Twitter. It was almost flat except a non-significant peak in week 18.

Neither about “Mactaquac” nor “SiteC”, the Instagram traffic has no relationship with news

published on the main media. This means, in the majority of cases, news was not being

disseminated or discussed on Instagram.

Figure 4: Twitter and Instagram traffic of "SiteC", from date to date

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The difference between Twitter and Instagram traffic was caused by different users’

behaviors. Generally speaking, Twitter is a more ideal platform to discuss public topics since

it is mostly text-based. Although there is a limit of 140 characters for each single tweet, it

allows users to add outside web URLs so that news on the other media websites can be

circulated through Twitter networks. Users can post photos and videos on Twitter, which is

the main service of Instagram. Thus, Twitter has some unique advantages and provides

some of the same functions as Instagram. On the other hand, Instagram is a photo- and

video-based platform. Users have to post at least a photo or video each time while the text-

based description is not required. This is the biggest obstacle for Instagram being an online

forum, though it allows more characters and hashtags for content descriptions. This may

also cause the mismatch of the photo (video) and the text. In addition, viewers are more

likely to merely focus on the content and do not bother to read the long description

carefully sometimes. Thus, Instagram is more suitable to post photo- and video-based

contents about people’s private lives.

Another reason for Twitter to be a preferred space for public discourse is that it has more

big players or opinion leaders including journalists, politicians, and relevant organizations.

Therefore, Twitter has a better political and public environment for public issues to be fully

discussed. People can find various voices on Twitter and get directed connections with

important figures.

Keyword analysis

Netlytic automatically counted the most frequent keywords in relevant tweets and

Instagram posts for each month from January 1 to June 30, 2015. The top 20 keywords per

month for each platform and each topic were examined to find the common ones. Other

top 10 keywords for each platform and each topic are also shown in graphs (Figures 5-10).

Each graph shows four dimensions, including Twitter, Instagram, “Mactaquac”, and “SiteC”.

For example, Figure 5 is the analysis result for January 2015 which shows that: (1) there is

no common keyword for all datasets; (2) “This” and “Mactaquac” are the two common

keywords for tweets and Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac”; (3) “SiteC” is the only

common keyword for tweets and Instagram posts containing “SiteC”; (4) “Fitness” and

“Strong” are the common keywords for Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac” or “SiteC”;

(5) “This” is the common keyword for tweets containing “Mactaquac” or “SiteC”; (6) the

‘other’ keywords are respectively the most frequent ones for the four datasets: tweets

containing “Mactaquac”, Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac”, tweets containing

“SiteC”, and Instagram posts containing “SiteC”.

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Figure 5: Keyword analysis (January, 2015)

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Figure 6: Keyword analysis (February, 2015)

Figure 7: Keyword analysis (March, 2015)

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Figure 8: Keyword analysis (April, 2015)

Figure 9: Keyword analysis (May, 2015)

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Figure 10: Keyword analysis (June, 2015)

Other than the use of the pronoun “This”, and the topic words “Mactaquac” and “SiteC”,

the results of keyword analysis for tweet and Instagram content indicate that:

(1) Relevant discussions on Twitter were mainly focused on the projects themselves, the

rivers, and the places because of most frequent keywords such as “river”, “valley”,

“hydro”, “bcpoli”, “nbpoli”, “panel”, “review”, “@nb_power”, “byhydro”, and so on;

(2) Instagram photos usually showed people’s private lives such as outdoor workout so that

“Fitness” was the common keyword all the time for both case areas;

(3) The most frequent keywords of “Mactaquac” were more about lifestyle, tourism,

weather, which may imply that the project was less discussed on Twitter and Instagram

partially because it is a local issue for the residents who want to keep the reservoir;

(4) While the Site C project caused much wider attention and discussion on Twitter, so the

keywords mostly focused on the energy issues, political issues (e.g. “bchydro”),

landowners (e.g. “landowners”), and the impacts on the river and the valley (e.g. “river”

and “valley”);

(5) Keywords such as “love” and “happy” in June showed people’s more positive tones in

the summer;

(6) Bigger players and opinion leaders on Twitter and Instagram had a great influence on

the keywords ranking (e.g., the yoga-related keywords in the dataset of Instagram posts

with “Mactaquac” were contributed by one user who posted many photos about her

yoga life);

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(7) One big player’s personal opinion may distort our understanding of online discourse

(e.g., the keywords form Twitter-Mactaquac dataset in January, “lake” and “ecosystem”

were only used by @mossman_peter);

(8) Some hashtags (e.g., “#gym”, “#body”, and “fit”) were used as the most popular ones

shared by users to tag their lifestyle and to attract more viewers.

(9) Some keywords (e.g., “igyogafam” and “20-Apr-15”) were only used by one big player

which may not relate to the energy projects or other popular topics;

(10) Local culture may influence people’s use of language and hashtag online (e.g.,

“beautiful Newbrunswick” as an informal slogan was widely used by people on

Instagram).

These analysis results can show us a brief image of the most frequent topics about

“Mactaquac” and “SiteC” on both platforms. However, this analysis was automatically run

by Netlytic which ranked keywords simply by counting every word in tweets and Instagram

posts without careful examination of contexts. This deficiency may cause distortions when

interpreting and understanding the analysis results.

Theme coding

On account of the large volume of information in the datasets, this study is unable to

examine tweets and Instagram posts one by one by hand. Thus, Nvivo was used to

automatically code tweets (including original tweets, retweets, and replies) and Instagram

posts (including original posts, reposts, and comments) by identified keywords. If one tweet

or one Instagram post (textual description part) contains one identified keyword or

stemmed word, it will be coded into the relevant category. This study applied a deductive

method so that all of the coding themes (categories) were developed before coding work to

discover issues people discussed on Twitter and Instagram.

There are four main coding categories, energy-related, politics- and government-related,

economy-related, and environment-related issues. Under each main category, sub-

categories present particular issues people may be concerned about and discuss online.

Appendix C shows the description and keywords of each sub-category. Although the

categories were aimed to be developed as exhaustive, it could not be completed. For

example, “First Nation”, “Aboriginal”, and “Natives” were the identified keywords for coding

people’s concern about First Nation issue. However, there were many other words that

people might also use to discuss the same topic. Thus, the limit of this analysis may cause

underestimation of some relevant issues.

The coding results (Figure 11; Table 1) shows that none of Instagram post containing

“Mactaquac” and only a few of those ones containing “SiteC” used relevant keywords in

their textual descriptions for posts. In taking a careful examination for these identified

posts, only one user was actually talking about the energy project (Figure 12). Thus, this may

indicate Instagram has not become a popular forum for public discussion online.

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Figure 11: Issues discussed on Twitter and Instagram about two cases (bars without numbers = 0)

Table 1

Result of theme coding

Twitter Instagram

Mactaquac SiteC Mactaquac SiteC

Energy Safety 12 13 0 0

Energy Accessibility 0 9 0 2

Energy Waste 0 0 0 0

Energy Depletion 0 0 0 0

Energy Self-sufficiency 0 1 0 0

Energy Update 0 0 0 0

Energy Cost & Cost of

Energy Project

31 440 0 1

Energy Monopoly 0 0 0 0

Politics 27 46 0 0

Revenue Increase 0 6 0 0

Knowledge Accessibility 0 11 0 0

First Nation 1 228 0 0

Economic Development 22 52 0 0

Unemployment 0 0 0 0

Job Creation 0 0 0 0

Property Loss 0 0 0 0

Land Loss 0 36 0 0

Environmental Impact 0 66 0 0

Landscape 1 6 0 1

Sustainability 1 39 0 1

Health 5 21 0 0

Pollution 0 14 0 0

GHG Emission 0 2 0 0

0

200

400

600

12 31 27 1 22 1 1 513 9 1

440

46 6 11

228

52 36 666 39 21 14 2

2 1 1 1

Twitter-Mactaquac Twitter-SiteC Instagram-Mactaquac Instagram-SiteC

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Figure 12: An Instagram post related to the Site C dam project (@northern_redhead, 2015)

On the contrary, Twitter is a much better platform for public discussion. More tweets were

coded into relevant themes which means most tweets were indeed discussing the issues

(Figure 11; Table 1). According to the coding result, the issue people were most concerned

about the Site C project was energy cost and the cost of the energy project (Figure 13a).

Other issues which were also widely discussed were first nation, environmental impact,

economic development, politics, land loss, and sustainability (Figure 13b-g). Some of other

issues were also discussed by small group of online users: (1) some people appealed to

upgrade school before the dam construction due to safety consideration; some people

mentioned the lack of public knowledge about the hydroelectric project; some people

worried about the pollution during the dam construction; and some people the potential

flooding of the riparian landscape. Tweets identified by “accessibility” were not really about

energy accessibility.

Figure 13a: A Twitter user discussing the cost of the Site C project (BC Sustainable Energy, 2014)

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Figure 13b: A Twitter user discussing first nation (Russell, 2014)

Figure 13c: A Twitter user discussing environmental impacts (Maurer, 2014)

Figure 13d: A Twitter user discussing economic development (Sierra Club BC, 2015)

Figure 13e: A Twitter user discussing political issue (Boon, 2015)

Figure 13f: A Twitter user discussing farmland loss (Livable4All, 2015)

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Figure 13g: A Twitter user discussing sustainability (Holm, 2015)

The public discourse on the Mactaquac project was discussed much less on Twitter. The

three main issues people mentioned were energy cost and cost of the energy project,

politics, and economic development (Figures 14a-c). Though the keyword “safe” was

identified 12 times in different tweets, they were mainly talking about road safety in the

winter time in the Mactaquac area. Tweets identified by “health” also did not relate to the

dam project.

Figure 14a: A Twitter user discussing energy cost and the cost of the energy project (Ethan, 2015)

Figure 14b: A Twitter user discussing politics (CBC New Brunswick, 2015)

Figure 14c: A Twitter user discussing economic development (Macdonald, 2015)

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Big Players on Twitter and Instagram

Identifying big players on social media sites is a way to study the online environment.

According to different volumes of total Twitter and Instagram posts for each dataset, the

criteria for being a big player, who is active and have some influence on social media sites,

are different (Table 2). 21 big players were identified from all the datasets (from October 2,

2014 to July 1, 2015). To meet these criteria, Table 3 shows the detailed information.

Table 2

Criteria for being a big player

Social Media Platform Project Total Posts more than

(2014.10.2-2015.6.24)

Followers more

than

Twitter Mactaquac 35 300

SiteC 100 300

Instagram Mactaquac 35 100

SiteC 30 100

Note. Total posts including original posts, reposts, and replies (comments)

Table 3

Big players identified by numbers of posts and followers (Oct 2, 2014 – July 1, 2015)

User Name Account

status

Total

posts Followers

Attitude toward

the energy projects

Twitter – “Mactaquac”

@mossman_peter Private 131 632 Keep the reservoir

@SeeNewBrunswick Organization 37 11600 None

Instagram – “Mactaquac”

@erica_whitman Private 281 1777 None

@haystack_design_services Company 58 801 None

@sdharamr Private 41 13600 None

@jessica.blanchard1 Private 38 432 None

Twitter – “SiteC”

@ConnectingTrue Private 2866 858 Against

@SavePeaceValley Organization 803 1122 Against

@VillageCoal Private 444 1107 Against

@envirochap_d Private 412 319 Against

@Sierra_BC Organization 312 4959 Against

@DavidConway3 Private 277 1733 Support

@bafroe Private 262 1142 Against

@PriscillaJudd Private 172 4475 Against

@wildernews Organization 160 6830 Against

@warrenbrazier Private 152 972 Neutral

@RegimeChangeBC Private 117 1964 Against

@Harold_Steves Private 110 1566 Against

@wendyholm Private 106 1044 Against

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@thegreenpagesBC Organization 103 2508 Against

Instagram – “SiteC”

@bwell.alex Private 38 245 None

Note. Total posts including original posts, reposts, and replies (comments)

Since Instagram is not an ideal platform for discussing a hydroelectric project, the one big player

identified from posts containing “SiteC” and the four from “Mactaquac” were all private accounts

and did not discuss the hydroelectric projects. They only used “Mactaquac” or “SiteC” as a tag for

place or as a popular hashtag so that more people could view their posts.

Regarding big players on Twitter around the topic of “Mactaquac”, @mossman_peter is a private

account and an extreme opponent of removing the dam and restoring the river. Another big player

@SeeNewBrunswick is an official account for New Brunswick tourism. It mainly tweeted photos and

information for travelling to New Brunswick, so it did not show a specific opinion toward the dam

project. However, tweets containing “SiteC” brought many more big players. There were 14 in total.

10 of them were private accounts and 4 of them were accounts for organizations. Among these 14

big players, 12 were against the Site C project for various reasons. For example, Twitter user

@Harold_Steves is a farmland owner and a founder of BC Agricultural Land Reserve & Farmland

Defense League, so he was mainly worried that the farmland would be flooded by the potential

reservoir. Another big player @bafroe is a lawyer who was interested in indigenous people; thus, he

spoke more about the impact on First nations. @wendyholm is an agronomist and economist so that

she focused on the agricultural and economic development in the Site C area. The four

organizational accounts all opposed the hydro project respectively on behalf of the Peace Valley

Environment Association, the Sierra Club BC, Greenpages BC, and the Wilderness Committee. There

was only one private big player, @DavidConway3, who supported the Site C project. He is the

Community Relations Manager of this project at BC Hydro. Another big player, @warrenbrazier, a

lawyer, showed a neutral attitude, concerned about the negative impacts the dam could bring while

admitting the positive ones such as lower energy cost.

These big players imply that Twitter has a better online environment for public discourse, which

means: (1) it provides individuals opportunities to express their opinions and to draw wide

audiences; (2) people can talk to others who have the same concerns and group together; (3) non-

profit organizations, lawyers, and other experts can help and speak for people. However, there is a

concern as well that Twitter might be a space where activism is easy to rise because of the

overwhelming voices for one side, the opponents’ side

Network Analysis

This study used Netlytic to process data collected from June 1 to July 1, 2015 and to

complete network analysis. The network analysis method applied to the Twitter datasets

are name networks, known as “who mentions whom”. A node in a name network means a

Twitter user and a tie between two nodes presents the user’s name directed to, sent, or

received by the node user (Netlytic, 2015). Based on the form of information dissemination

on Twitter, a mention is the main operation to share ideas with other users. Thus, name

network is the most effective method to identify the most common shape of network and

20

opinion leaders. Another analysis method, chain network, known as “who replies to whom”,

was applied to the Instagram datasets. A node in this network means an Instagram user and

a tie can present a range of connections from “a sender to the last person in the post chain

only" to "Connect a sender to all people in the reference chain with decreasing weights"

(Netlytic, 2015). Compared with a mention, a reply is the more common operation on

Instagram for one user to show his or her opinion toward one post.

“Mactaquac” on Twitter

From the network analysis result of tweets containing “Mactaquac” (Figure 15), Netlytic

identified five main clusters. Clusters 1 (Figure 16a), 2 (Figure 16b), and 5 (Figure 16e) are

hub-and-spoke, which means many users have connections with the same opinion leader.

The three opinion leaders are @seenewbrunswick, @nb_power, and @cbcnb. All of them

are accounts of organizations: the tourism group, a power company, and a main media

organization. While clusters 3 (Figure 16c) and 4 (Figure 16d) have no opinion leaders.

Cluster 3 contains unidirectional, bidirectional, and polygonal shapes of connection. Cluster

4 is mostly consisted of unidirectional shapes. Unidirectional connection means one user

mentions another; while bidirectional means two users mention each other. Polygonal

connection means three or more users mention some other users who are in the same

polygon as well. The opinion leaders identified by network analysis are different from the

big players identified by numbers of tweets and followers except @seenewbrunswick. This

indicates that opinion leaders in this case might not be the most active accounts but their

messages could have a wider dissemination and their names are more frequently

mentioned by other users. Also, organizational accounts have greater influence than private

ones.

According to the theory network archetypes, this Twitter – “Mactaquac” network is

polarized issue network (Kozinets, 2015). “Polarized issue networks are connected, tight,

and unified together; however, they are divided and partisan with one other large group.”

(ibid., p.43) Figure 15 shows there is a separation between the group led by @nb_power

and another led by @seenewbrunswick. The two large groups were discussing the same

topic on Twitter while respectively generating, circulating information with similar opinions

within their own group and ignored the other one. They only had a few connections

between two large groups.

21

Figure 15: Network analysis (Twitter - "Mactaquac", June, 2015)

Figure 16a: Cluster 1 (Twitter - "Mactaquac")

Figure 16c: Cluster 3 (Twitter - "Mactaquac")

22

Figure 16b: Cluster 2 (Twitter - "Mactaquac")

Figure 16d: Cluster 4 (Twitter - "Mactaquac")

Figure 16e: Cluster 5 (Twitter - "Mactaquac")

“SiteC” on Twitter

The network analysis result of tweets containing “SiteC” is richer because of the huge size of

this dataset (Figure 17). Two opinion leaders was identified from the five main clusters,

@savepeacevalley from cluster 1 (Figure 18a) and @villagecoal from cluster 2 (Figure 18b).

They are also two of the big players identified by the number of tweets and followers. The

other three clusters do not show any opinion leaders. In this case, there are various shapes

of network, including unidirectional, bidirectional, polygonal, and hub-and-spoke. This might

indicate discussions on Twitter about “SiteC” were heat and people with various opinions

interacted with each other, which could help to enhance public discourse and to accelerate

the flow of information.

Compared with the polarized issue network of “Mactaquac” on Twitter, “SiteC” may show

the image of tight social networks, which “are composed of the most highly interconnected

people with very few isolated participants” (Kozinets, 2015, p.44). This type of social

23

network conceits an ideal scenario for public discourse on social media sites where users

“conduct large and open conversations about similar topics, responding to one another in a

form that resembles the coherent threads of a newsgroup or forum” (ibid., p.45). However,

this tight social networks of “SiteC” on Twitter seem to be arising from only dam opponents,

rather than those with diverse opinions. Data collection only began after the Site C dam was

approved, and so there may be little incentive for dam supporters to voice their opinions.

Figure 17: Network analysis (Twitter - "SiteC", June, 2015)

Figure 18a: Cluster 1 (Twitter - "SiteC")

Figure 18b: Cluster 2 (Twitter - "SiteC")

24

Figure 18c: Cluster 3 (Twitter - "SiteC")

Figure 18d: Cluster 4 (Twitter - "SiteC")

Figure 18e: Cluster 5 (Twitter - "SiteC")

“Mactauqac” on Instagram

Instagram has a different form of information generation and dissemination. The chain

network can help to find the people who get the most responses from other users, which

means his or her photos are popular among users. The network analysis result (Figure 19)

from Instagram posts containing “Mactaquac” shows two potential opinion leaders

@erica_whitman (Figure 20a) and @haystack_design_services (Figure 20b), who are the

same two biggest players identified by numbers of posts and followers. However, they are

private accounts who posted nothing related to the Mactaquac dam project. They used the

hashtag “Mactaquac” only as a place name or a popular hashtag which could attract more

viewers. Regarding the shapes of connection, Instagram presented more simple, small, and

25

independent clusters which only contains unidirectional and hub-and-spoke shapes. This

implies that Instagram users form small social groups with limited audiences more easily

and information is more difficult to circulate between different groups.

Figure 19: Network analysis (Instagram - "Mactaquac", June, 2015)

Figure 20a: Cluster 1 (Instagram - "Mactaquac")

Figure 20a: Cluster 2 (Instagram - "Mactaquac")

“SiteC” on Instagram

The network analysis result (Figure 21) of Instagram posts containing “SiteC” shows many

similarities as that of “Mactaquac”. The clusters are simple, small, and independent. The

main four potential opinion leaders received less replies than the two from “Mactaquac”.

@bwell.alex was the same big player who was also identified by the number of posts and

26

followers. Like this one, the other three accounts are all private accounts and focused on

workout and fitness. This can also explain the keyword analysis result of this dataset that

“Fitness” was the top word all the time. It may because this was a popular lifestyle in that

area.

Figure 21: Network analysis (Instagram - "SiteC", June, 2015)

Figure 22a: Cluster 1 (Instagram - "SiteC")

Figure 22c: Cluster 3 (Instagram - "SiteC")

27

Figure 22b: Cluster 2 (Instagram - "SiteC")

Figure 22d: Cluster 4 (Instagram - "SiteC")

Discussion

This study examined tweets and Instagram posts containing hashtags or keywords,

“Mactaquac” or “SiteC”, from October 2, 2014 to July 1, 2015. Analysis results indicate that

Instagram is not an ideal space for public discourse for these six main seasons:

(1) The photo- or video-required form for each Instagram post is not suitable for public

discussion. People are more used to discussing things based on text. Photos or videos

may not be the best material or the form for discussion on public topics.

(2) Compared with Twitter, Instagram is a new social media platform and has fewer users

and a lower volume of information. This is also a limit for wide and full discussion.

(3) The typical networks on Instagram are small, simple, and independent. This usually locks

information within a small social group instead of disseminating it to wider audiences.

(4) The results from coding work show that hashtags and keywords related to public topics

on Instagram sometimes have a low relationship with the topic itself. This means users

may use topic hashtags or keywords for other reasons but not discussing the exact topic.

Thus, it is more difficult for users to search and identify relevant topics or information.

(5) There are fewer big players and opinion leaders on Instagram. Instagram is not a good

choice for people who use social media to seek instant and directed information from

official accounts, relevant organizational accounts, and other people who are also

concerned about the same topic.

(6) Users on Instagram are more likely to show their private daily lives.

Though Instagram has many shortcomings for being a forum online, it has one advantage. It

has 2,200-character and 30-hashtag limits for text-based description accompanied with each

photo or video, while Twitter only allows users to post tweets with a maximum 140-

character limit for each. Thus, on Twitter, messages have to be concise and incompletely

expressed sometimes. This is the biggest obstacle on Twitter for public discourse. However,

this advantage of Instagram may be undermined by two things. First, Instagram is photo- or

28

video-required, which means users can not only express opinions in text. This may cause the

mismatch of photo content and its textual description. Another fact is that Instagram users

are most likely to merely focus on the content of photos or videos and ignore the

description.

Nevertheless, Instagram still has potential for public discourse about local events. In the

middle of July, 2015, #peacepaddle became a popular hashtag and was widely used by

people in the Site C area to tag the event, “Paddle for the Peace” which aimed to support

and celebrate the on-going integrity of the Peace River Valley. People shared photos they

took in the event on Instagram to against the Site C project. Although this was a good

practice for public discourse on Instagram, it was limited by the venue, the time, and the

event per se. This means such discourse can merely involve people who attend the events

and have photos or videos to share.

On the contrary, Twitter has strengths for being an ideal space for public discussion:

(1) Twitter is mainly a text-based social media platform. This is convenient for users to

discuss public issues. It also allows other multiple media forms, such as photos, videos, and

URLs. Those appended materials can support and enhance people’s discussion, and

disseminate information from traditional media to social media.

(2) There are many more users on Twitter and the daily volume of information is much

larger than that on Instagram.

(3) Twitter has more various forms of networks which connect more users with each other.

This helps to widely disseminate information. Also, users can receive new messages or

different opinions from other users whom they might not be well acquainted with before.

(4) Hashtags and keywords have a higher relevance to the exact topics on Twitter than on

Instagram, which maybe because of the 140-charaters limit so that users have to choose

words and hashtags more carefully. This can help users to search and identify topics more

accurately and effectively.

(5) Many government offices, politicians, companies, journalists, experts, and other

organizations have Twitter accounts and post messages on a regular basis. People can get

sufficient information from different perspectives.

(6) Twitter is a more public space. Many of its users are using it for their public lives. Some

of them are even more willing to express public opinions online, than in their ‘real life’,

because of anonymity.

29

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33

Appendix A: Twitter and Instagram Traffic

Figure A1: Twitter traffic of “Mactaquac”

Figure A2: Twitter traffic of “SiteC”

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

0

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100

150

200

250

300

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400

02-Oct-14 NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY 01-Jul-15

Number of tweets Number of users Average tweets by per user

0

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2

3

4

5

6

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

02-Oct-14 NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY 01-Jul-15

Number of tweets Number of users Average tweets by per user

34

Figure A3: Instagram traffic of “Mactaquac”

Figure A4: Instagram traffic of “SiteC”

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

02-Oct-14 NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY 01-Jul-15

Number of posts Number of users Average posts by per user

0

0.5

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1.5

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0

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02-Oct-14 NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY 01-Jul-15

Number of posts Number of users Average posts by per user

35

Appendix B: News List

Mactaquac

Week 1:

(1) CBC. (2014, October 1). Mactaquac dam replacement cost could hit $5B, says NB Power

[web news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-

brunswick/mactaquac-dam-replacement-cost-could-hit-5b-says-nb-power-1.2783749

(2) CBC. (2014, October 3). Mactaquac future [audio program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Maritimes/Information+Morning+-

+Fredericton/ID/2540728275/

Week 8:

(1) Mactaquac Official Website. (2014, November 25). NB Power seeks input on technical

study guidelines for Mactaquac future options [web news]. Retrieved from

http://www.mactaquac.ca/nb-power-seeks-input-on-technical-study-guidelines-for-

mactaquac-future-options/

Week 17:

(1) CBC. (2015, January 23). Transformer move to Mactaquac dam to cause traffic delays

[web news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-

brunswick/transformer-move-to-mactaquac-dam-to-cause-traffic-delays-1.2929734

Week 22:

(1) Mactaquac Official Website. (2015, February 26). Public input contributes to economic,

social and environmental review of Mactaquac options [web news]. Retrieved from

http://www.mactaquac.ca/public-input-contributes-economic-social-environmental-

review-mactaquac-options/

Week 23:

(1) CBC. (2015, March 4). Mactaquac Dam Project Options [audio program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningfredericton/2015/03/04/mactaquac-dam-

project-options/

(2) CBC. (2015, March 11). Potential Impacts of Mactaquac Dam Refurbishment [audio

program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningfredericton/2015/03/11/potential-impacts-of-

mactaquac-dam-refurbishment/

Week 24:

(1) CBC. (2015, March 12). New Brunswick Political Panel: March 12: The future of the

Mactaquac Dam [video program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/NB/Political+Panel/ID/2658510259/

36

(2) CBC. (2015, March 12). Dam Meeting [video program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/NB/CBC+News:+New+Brunswick/ID/2658414

626/

Week 36:

(1) CBC. (2015, June 2). Mactaquac dam replacement testing going ahead this summer

[web news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-

brunswick/mactaquac-dam-replacement-testing-going-ahead-this-summer-1.3096870

Week 37:

(1) CBC. (2015, June 16). NB Power says rate increase will offset Mactaquac dam costs [web

news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-power-

says-rate-increase-will-offset-mactaquac-dam-costs-1.3116468

(2) CBC. (2015, June 17). NB Power rate hearing focuses on Mactaquac replacement [web

news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-power-

rate-hearing-focuses-on-mactaquac-replacement-1.3116736

Week 38:

(1) Mactaquac Official Website. (2015, June 23). Mactaquac Station welcomes visitors for

open house and tours [web news]. Retrieved from

http://www.mactaquac.ca/mactaquac-station-welcomes-visitors-for-open-house-and-

tours/

Site C

Week 2:

(1) Site C Official Website. (2014, October 9). Why BC Hydro is Proposing Site C [web news].

Retrieved from https://www.sitecproject.com/news-and-information/why-bchydro-is-

proposing-site-c

(2) CBC. (2014, October 15). Site C passes environmental assessment [audio program].

Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/daybreaknorth/interviews/2014/10/15/site-c-

passes-environmental-assessment/

Week 11:

(1) CBC. (2014, December 16). Province approves 8.3 billion dollar Site C Dam [audio

program]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/radiowest/2014/12/16/province-

approves-83-billion-dollar-site-c-dam/

(2) BC News. (2014, December 16). Site C to provide more than 100 years of affordable,

reliable clean power [web news]. Retrieved from https://news.gov.bc.ca/stories/site-c-

to-provide-more-than-100-years-of-affordable-reliable-clean-power

(3) CBC. (2014, December 16). Gwen Johansson on Site C in 1973/letters to Linda Jones of

Environmental Assessment Agency [audio program]. Retrieved from

http://www.cbc.ca/daybreaknorth/2014/12/16/gwen-johansson-on-site-c-in-

1973letters-to-linda-jones-of-environmental-assessment-agency/

37

(4) CBC. (2014, December 17). Energy minister defends Site C [audio program]. Retrieved

from

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/British+Columbia/The+Early+Edition/ID/

2640855666/

Week 31:

(1) Site C Official Website. (2015, April 30). BC Hydro Selects Preferred Proponent for Site C

Worker Accommodation Contract [web news]. Retrieved from

https://www.sitecproject.com/bc-hydro-selects-preferred-proponent-for-site-c-worker-

accommodation-contract

(2) CBC. (2015, May 6). What would the flooding at Site C look like somewhere else? [audio

program]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/radiowest/2015/05/06/what-would-the-

flooding-at-site-c-look-like-somewhere-else-2/

Week 32:

(1) Site C Official Website. (2015, May 11). BC Hydro Awards Contract for South Bank

Clearing Work for Site C [web news]. Retrieved from

https://www.sitecproject.com/news-and-information/bc-hydro-awards-contract-for-

south-bank-clearing-work-for-site-c

Week 34:

(1) Site C Official Website. (2015, May 27).BC Hydro and Building Trades Advance Labour

Stability for Site C [web news]. Retrieved from https://www.sitecproject.com/bc-hydro-

and-building-trades-advance-labour-stability-for-site-c

Week 35:

(1) The Globe and Mail. (2015, May 31). B.C.’s Site C dam still waiting on permits delayed

by Treaty 8 group [web news]. Retrieved from

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bcs-site-c-dam-still-waiting-

on-permits-delayed-by-treaty-8-group/article24717382/

(2) CBC. (2015, June 3). Site C dam puts Peace River Valley on Canada's top 10 endangered

places list [web news]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-

columbia/site-c-dam-puts-peace-river-valley-on-canada-s-top-10-endangered-places-

list-1.3099500

Week 36:

(1) Site C Official Website. (2015, June 8). Public Invited to Learn about Site C Construction

[web news]. Retrieved from https://www.sitecproject.com/public-invited-to-learn-

about-site-c-construction

Week 39:

(1) The Globe and Mail. (2015, June 25). Scientists scramble to catalogue wildlife ahead of

B.C. dam decision [web news]. Retrieved from

38

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/scientists-to-catalogue-

wildlife-bcs-site-c-dam-would-drown/article25104342/

39

Appendix C: Coding Themes (Categories)

Dam-related issues contain four main themes (categories): energy, politics and government,

economy, and environment. Each theme has its own sub-categories (Table C1, Table C2,

Table C3, and Table C4).

TABLE C1

ENERGY-RELATED ISSUES

ISSUE TYPE Description Keywords

ENERGY SAFETY Energy Safety Safe

ENERGY

ACCESSIBILITY

Accessibility to different energy recourses

Need more energy products

Access

ENERGY WASTE Overuse, use too much, and waste of energy Overuse,

*Energy Waste

ENERGY

DEPLETION

Worries about energy depletion Deplete

ENERGY SELF-

SUFFICIENCY

Worries about dependence on importing energy

from outside

Need to discover and use energy inside the

province

Self-sufficient

ENERGY UPDATE Update of energy infrastructure

Get rid of old energy facilities and build new ones

*Energy Update

ENERGY COST Complains about high energy cost Cost

COST OF ENERGY

PROJECT

Worries about high cost of energy project Cost

ENERGY

MONOPOLY

Monopoly by NB Power Monopoly

NOTE. ALL THE KEYWORDS WITHOUT * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS AND STEMMED WORDS. THE

KEYWORDS WITH * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS ONLY.

40

TABLE C2

POLITICS- AND GOVERNMENT-RELATED ISSUES

ISSUE TYPE Description Keywords

POLITICS Complains about political or governmental

interference with energy decision-making

Politics

REVENUE

INCREASE

Look forward to revenue increase by energy

development

Revenue

KNOWLEDGE

ACCESSIBILITY

Worries about energy-related knowledge

accessibility

Knowledge

FIRST NATION Worries about first nation *First Nation,

Aboriginal,

Natives NOTE. ALL THE KEYWORDS WITHOUT * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS AND STEMMED WORDS. THE

KEYWORDS WITH * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS ONLY.

TABLE C3

ECONOMY-RELATED ISSUES

ISSUE TYPE Description Keywords

ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT

Participants think developing energy will help to

develop economy

Economic

UNEMPLOYMENT Worries about unemployment Unemployment

JOB CREATION Participants think developing energy will help to

create jobs

*Create Job

PROPERTY LOSS

LAND LOSS

Worries about losing private properties by

proceeding energy projects

Worries about losing land by proceeding energy

projects

*Property Loss

*Land Loss,

*Farmland Loss NOTE. ALL THE KEYWORDS WITHOUT * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS AND STEMMED WORDS. THE

KEYWORDS WITH * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS ONLY.

41

TABLE C4

ENVIRONMENT-RELATED ISSUES

ISSUE TYPE Description Keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL

IMPACT

Worries about environmental impact

Not mention any specific type of environmental

impact

Environment

LANDSCAPE Worries about landscape impacts Landscape

SUSTAINABILITY Worries about the future generations Sustainable

HEALTH Human’s health Health

POLLUTION Pollution Pollute

GHG EMISSION Greenhouse gas emission Greenhouse NOTE. ALL THE KEYWORDS WITHOUT * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS AND STEMMED WORDS. THE

KEYWORDS WITH * WERE IDENTIFIED BY THE EXACT WORDS ONLY.