A small group of Twitter users — largely white and well-educated — appears to have powerful influence over Hamilton politics, says a researcher studying local use of the social tool.

Ryan Price, a master's degree student in communications and new media, is looking at how Twitter fosters a sense of community online and in the real world, using the Hamilton microcosm as his lab.

He's trying to determine whether Twitter-based activism gets tangible results, and has focused on locals who tweet about "community" and "politics," along with the hashtag "#HamOnt."

While he's still working on his paper and parsing data collected a few weeks ago, Price says his initial conclusions show the local Twitter community fosters strong enough ties that many people become friends in the real world after meeting online.

"There's something of a small-town mentality that still exists within Hamilton, despite it being a fairly large city," he said. "I'm looking at … what extent Twitter functions as the public sphere (where) everyone can speak on equal terms and discuss things like politics."

To do that, he surveyed about 110 people on their Twitter use and attitudes, including asking how many people had friends that they first met on the social network.

His report will include two case studies. One will focus on the online movement that led the city to cancel its public relations campaign with contractor Dialogue Partners in 2013, the other on #YesWeCannon, which pushed for a bike lane that is now in the works.

Price learned that about 600 people were actively tweeting about Dialogue Partners, while about 2,200 signed a digital petition for YesWeCannon. Both were successful campaigns.

"If you compare those numbers to the 500,000-plus people in the city of Hamilton, it's a small percentage who made great change," he said.

On demographics, Price said he'd expected to see a more diverse array of people in his community of interest. More than 90 per cent of his respondents did not identify as a visible minority, and most were well-educated with above-average incomes.

"It shows there is an extremely strong digital divide," he said.