{"id":2531,"date":"2010-01-06T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T03:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2010-01-06T22:33:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T03:33:00","slug":"the-facebook-rebellion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2531","title":{"rendered":"The Facebook Rebellion"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a lot of back and forth over just how meaningful the ever-growing \u201cCanadians Against Proroguing Parliament<\/a>\u201d group really is. Membership was at 73,367 when I started writing this post…I imagine it will have grown by the time I’m done.<\/p>\n

On the one side, the Toronto Star has adopted its usual understated approach, blasting a front page \u201cgrassroots fury<\/a>\u201d headline in response to a then 20,000 member Facebook group. Which, in fairness, looks kind of impressive when compared to the 473 fans of the Toronto Star<\/a> on Facebook.<\/p>\n

This headline prompted ridicule from Dan Cook (\u201c0.06% of Canadians are Mad<\/a>\u201d), while Conservative bloggers such as Stephen Taylor<\/a> have generally scoffed at the group, noting that 127,000 joined the anti-coalition Facebook group last December. (Of course, if this prorogation even generates even half the backlash that the coalition did, the Tories are probably in quite a bit of trouble.)<\/p>\n

Charles Adler<\/a> and Matt Gurney<\/a> have also ridiculed the group, complaining that people were acting immature (on Facebook of all places!) posting Harper “nazi” pictures on the group…and we all know that sort of juvenile<\/a> photo<\/a>–shop <\/a>would never <\/em>happen in a real grassroots movement.<\/p>\n

More to the point, Gurney has drawn attention to a rival group<\/a>, to show just how easy it is to get 70,000<\/strike> 130 people in a Facebook group.<\/p>\n

So just how impressive is the anti-prorogue group?<\/p>\n

Well, Ignatieff, Harper, and Layton all have between 27,000 and 30,000 supporters on Facebook. And they\u2019ve been building those numbers over some time, so there\u2019s reason to believe this group isn\u2019t just<\/em> composed of people who join every political group they\u2019re invited to (\u201cHelp elect Joe Nantuckett for the PEI Liberals? Sure<\/em>!\u201d).<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s difficult to get a comprehensive list, I ran a few quick keyword searches and the following appear to be the largest Canadian political groups out there:<\/p>\n

Canadians against a Liberal\/NDP coalition: 127,191
Canadians petition to cut gas prices to 79.9 cents: 111,709
Fair Copyright for Canada: 86,349
Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament: 75,752<\/strong>
Canadians against the new copyright bill C-61: 71,885
Legalize it, Canada: 70,923 (\u201cit\u201d, being pot)
CANADIANS AGAINST THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION: 64,850
Ordinary Canadians DO SUPPORT the Arts, Mr. Harper. You are dead wrong: 63,246<\/p>\n

So the anti-prorogue group has been able to match some of the largest \u201clefty\u201d issue groups out there, in a very short time. No, that doesn’t mean it’s an issue that will move votes -I’d imagine most of the members weren’t exactly Harper-holics beforehand, and I have a hard time seeing anyone changing their vote over this.<\/p>\n

But as it creeps towards the membership total of the anti-coalition group, it certainly shouldn’t be ignored.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong><\/em>: 83,000 in the group and, more importantly, the tories are down 3 points<\/a> in the latest Ekos poll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a lot of back and forth over just how meaningful the ever-growing \u201cCanadians Against Proroguing Parliament\u201d group really is. Membership was at 73,367 when I started writing this post…I imagine it will have grown by the time I’m done. On the one side, the Toronto Star has adopted its usual understated approach, blasting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}