The historic resignation of the Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rosselló Nevares was fueled by massive protests on the streets, accompanied by an equally substantial use of social media to spread claims that he should leave office immediately, given the citizens had lost all trust in his Administration.

In the span of 14 days, the Center of Investigative Journalism published 889 pages of a Telegram chat that showed how the Governor and 11 other members and non members of his cabinet mocked women and children, all while discussing privileged information concerning the Government with third parties. This led to the creation of the hashtag '#RickyRenuncia' (#RickyResign), which was used by people on and off the island and spearheaded the technological crusade against a Governor who, throughout his two-year tenure, spent millions of dollars on publicity campaigns and worried greatly about his image and performance on online polls.

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), and it's used on social media websites and applications, like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to group and identify messages on a specific topic. Besides providing a comic relief of sorts with memes and GIFs, social media has proven to be a powerful platform for amplifying someone's needs or to demand a social change continuously.

'[Hashtags] not only help to keep the issue showing up through social networks, it also helps organize and mobilize. This time was different from previous protests that happened in the past because now Twitter was used to announce what was going to be done at an X given time. It's innovative,' said Christopher Torres Lugo, a Computer Science graduate student at the University of Indiana Bloomington.

Impressed by the sudden appearance of '#Rickysequeda' (#RickyStays) used by the Governor's supporters, Torres Lugo decided to analyze the use of that hashtag and its counterpart asking him to resign in order to determine if both stemmed from real individuals and its rise was organic, or if they were spread by bots or fake accounts, used commonly on the Island to impose a particular ideology.

The Telegram chat were the Governor had an active participation showed that his team orchestrated political attacks against his opposition and critics, such as the Mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, and former speaker of the New York City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, by using what appeared to be a legion of paid and organized 'trolls' aligned with his interests.

'The contrast between both hashtags was pretty evident. In the graphs I made there's a very obvious point of influx. It wasn't a matter of someone suddenly decided to organize others and tweet, it was more of an organic thing. They weren't suspicious accounts trying to push the hashtag forward,' added Torres Lugo.

The student, whose line of work focuses on Twitter trends in the United States, used tools developed by the University to understand the role of hashtags in this fight of the people. As part of an agreement, the University has access to a database of around 10% of the tweets shared in the platform, which helps develop further analysis.

In total, around 12 hashtags were created in light of the people's demands, that ultimately achieved part of its full purpose:

#RickyLeaks

#RickyChats

#RickyRenuncia

#RickyVeteYa

#RickyTeBote

#RickyGameOver

#RickyDictador

#ArrestenAElíasSánchez

#RickyRecoge

#AbajoRosselló

#ResidenciamientoYa

#RickyRenunció

The graphs used by Torres Lugo show that multiple hashtags started blowing up on Twitter on July 13th, which was two days after Governor Rosselló Nevares publicly addressed and apologized for the chat group for the first time and also spoke about the six arrests of members of his Administration that made him cut his family vacation short. Nonetheless, people were already showing up at his doorstep to protest in Old San Juan, where the Governor's Mansion is located.

The different hashtags weren't created because people were inconsistent, rather they intended for the situation to stay in the public eye in the long run and wanted to counteract Twitter's algorithm that determines trends. According to Twitter's FAQs page: 'Trends are determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow, your interests, and your location. This algorithm identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help you discover the hottest emerging topics of discussion on Twitter.'

With that in mind, it was also common to see the use of two or more hashtags of that list on a single tweet or their respective variations, given that sometimes diacritical marks weren't used.

According to another user, Joe Villarini, #RickyRenuncia was used more than two million times on Twitter and, during a general strike on a Monday, it was used more than 250,000 times during rush hours (like 2 p.m. or 10 p.m.) Twitter itself was proof of the hashtag's popularity. The #RickyRenuncia became a trending topic locally and internationally and it was even transformed into a Moment.

Although Twitter was the common, the resignation claims thrown at the Governor of Puerto Rico didn't remain there. Users also turned to Instagram to let their claim be known by uploading a picture of big, white, bold letters over a black background with the message 'Ricky Renuncia' accompanied by the reasons why on the captions. Thousands of people shared the image and tagged the Governor's profile, so all his tagged pictures were that same one asking him to resign. At any given day, a person would spend more than four minutes scrolling at full speed through his tagged pictures and all that would be seen was that image.

He resolved by eliminating the option of allowing comments and tagged images, so then users started to unfollow him on all social networks.

Two days before Rosselló Nevares' resignation, the hashtag #WandaRenuncia started catching traction among users, in regard to Wanda Vázquez Garced, current Secretary of the Department of Justice and next in line to occupy his chair because the country currently lacks a Secretary of State. The Secretary of State resigned because he too was a member of the Telegram chat.

An opportunity for the Government?

The Rosselló Nevares Administration called itself a 'Millennial Government', according to the Governor's wife Beatriz Rosselló, because of its modern ideas and frequent social media use. The Telegram chat itself proves that there was a heavy interest in preserving a good image to the people and the media, even if that was false behind closed doors.

Nonetheless, while they called themselves Millennials because of technology inclination, the amount of digitally-oriented public policy was limited and, the ones that actually were approved, had little promotion. All the publicity efforts, it seemed, were focused on the Governor himself, which can be a lesson for future public servants who want to resonate with the people, according to a previous government official.

'Maybe before hashtags hadn't had the traction they have now, but we've used them before. We used #ZoningPR once and we got together a group of hackers, hashtags about laws, among others, but none have been a second place Trending Topic in the World [like #RickyRenuncia]. The Governor used #UnEquipo (One Team), but that's his, from his campaign. Learning to use hashtags goes hand in hand with learning the needs of the citizens,' stated Giancarlo González, who was the Chief Information Officer of the previous Governor Alejandro García Padilla.

González mentioned that the Government could've used the #CESCODigital hashtag more, which was a project developed under this Administration and that was publicly acclaimed, because it provided rapid access to the services of the local Department of Transportation, like license and registrations, and traffic tickets.

The use of the hashtag for this endeavor was very limited. On Facebook, it was shared around seven times, all by the Governor, the Department of State or the Department of Transportation.

Another issue the Government faced was that it lacked an important law that would've helped line up tech projects. On July 26th, exactly a week before his resignation kicked in, Rosselló Nevares signed the law that created the Puerto Rico Innovation and Technology Service (PRITS) in order to 'further Government efforts on innovation, information, and technology'.

'No public policy will work well without the good use of technology. The good use of technology is something that you can't just buy, it's something that you have to do. It's not buying Microsoft licenses, it's about having a committed team and redesigning services for the modern era. Why are we used to interacting with Government in such an analog and archaic way? This will require the recruitment of many people,' said González.