#RickyRenuncia: The Hashtag That Took Collective Outrage from Social Media to the Streets

After the press published hundreds of pages of a chat between Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello, members of his staff, and lobbyist friends in the summer of 2019, outrage spread swiftly across the island (Florido & Romo, 2019). The transcript included mockery, homophobic, and misogynistic slurs, as well as discussion of sensitive government information with people outside the government (El Nuevo Dia, 2019a; Valentin Ortiz & Minet, 2019). These messages were the last straw for millions of Puerto Ricans, who were recovering from a catastrophic hurricane and living through an economic depression. Social media became the platform for citizen calls, in Puerto Rico but also in the United States mainland and in Europe, for protests and demonstrations (El Nuevo Dia, 2019a; Martinez, 2019a; Metro, 2019; Sepulveda, 2019a, 2019b). The Puerto Rican diaspora played a strong role in a process of dissent public diplomacy (De Moya, 2018) that ended with the governor’s resignation.