Melis­sa Doughty

Mar­tine Pow­ers

The rise of the pro-high­way group Cit­i­zens 4D High­way has sparked de­bate around the coun­try, with some ob­servers clam­our­ing to learn the iden­ti­ty of those who fi­nanced a con­tro­ver­sial news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment dis­parag­ing ac­tivist Wayne Kublals­ingh. (De­fence at­tor­ney and tem­po­rary gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge claims he is one of the group's or­gan­is­ers.)

But who are the every­day peo­ple sup­port­ing this group and its ad­ver­tise­ments? A deep dive in­to da­ta mined from the group's so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing of­fers some sig­nif­i­cant in­sight.Most glar­ing­ly: On­ly about sev­en per cent of the peo­ple who have "liked" the Cit­i­zens 4D High­way Face­book page come from the re­gion that would be most di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the high­way–Debe, Mon De­sir, Fyz­abad, Siparia, Pe­nal, San Fran­cique, Pluck and Av­o­cat.

Still, that's 80 per cent more than the num­ber of peo­ple from those com­mu­ni­ties who have list­ed them­selves as fans of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment (HRM) Face­book page.And when it comes to the pro-high­way group's ge­o­graph­ic spread through­out the re­gion, it's clear that their staunchest sup­port­ers re­side large­ly out­side the re­gion af­fect­ed by the high­way.

Among the peo­ple who have been most ac­tive on the Cit­i­zens 4D High­way page–adding the high­est num­ber of "likes" to posts and mes­sages–most re­side in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Cou­va, Arou­ca and Point Fortin, with on­ly a hand­ful of the most ac­tive fol­low­ers hail­ing from Siparia, Fyz­abad or Pe­nal.

The num­bers are im­per­fect–some peo­ple choose not to al­low Face­book to make their home­town and cur­rent city pub­lic in­for­ma­tion–but they of­fer a pic­ture of a group that has oth­er­wise been shroud­ed in mys­tery.And it's on­ly been in re­cent weeks that the group has be­come more ac­tive–like­ly a re­sponse to the height­en­ing back­lash over their con­tro­ver­sial ad­ver­tise­ment.

The per­son or group who reg­is­tered the do­main name for Cit­i­zens4DHigh­way.com chose to keep his or her name, phone num­ber, and e-mail ad­dress con­cealed from the pub­lic do­main name reg­istry.How­ev­er, records show that the Web site was cre­at­ed Oc­to­ber 28, es­tab­lished with a one-year con­tract that costs the reg­is­trant $15 per year.

Who PNM, UNC 'like' on Face­book

And though sup­port­ers and op­po­nents of the Mon De­sir-Debe ex­ten­sion of the Sir Solomon So­choy High­way have main­tained that it's not a po­lit­i­cal is­sue, their "likes" on Face­book tell an­oth­er sto­ry.Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta on the cross-sec­tion of peo­ple who choose to add sup­port to both a high­way ac­tivist group and a na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal par­ty, the high­way move­ment is high­ly politi­cised, with de­mo­graph­ics break­ing down on pre­dictable po­lit­i­cal lines.

The Sun­day Guardian used da­ta down­loaded from Face­book on who "likes" a par­tic­u­lar group, and how two groups over­lap in "likes."Ba­si­cal­ly, .442 per cent of PNM's 42,052 Face­book fans al­so like "C4DH" or Cit­i­zens 4D High­way; .649 per cent al­so like the HRM. A PNM fol­low­er is more like to sup­port the HRM, but by a more mod­est mar­gin–they are on­ly about 1.5 times more like­ly to root for Kublals­ingh and the high­way pro­test­ers.

For UNC, 6.2 per cent of their 2,644 Face­book fans like C4DH; while on­ly 2.26 like HRM. A per­son who is a "fan" of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress on Face­book is about 2.7 times more like­ly to al­so "like" the Cit­i­zens 4D High­way rather than the High­way Re-Route Move­ment.