Using Social Media to Engage Toronto Communities for Resiliency and Stress Planning

As Toronto’s low-income areas grow, the city’s neighbourhoods experience a segregation by low- and high-income, contributing to chronic stress as environmental determinants and leading to negative health outcomes and chronic diseases. This study identified Crescent Town as one of the Toronto neighbourhoods with potentially high levels of chronic emotional stress through an analysis of emotions indicated by Tweets, as well as triangulation with administrative data describing relevant neighbourhood indicators. Crescent Town community members (n=23) were engaged using concept mapping to identify existing neighbourhood stressors and assets and empowered to strategize solutions. The ten-cluster solution created with six clusters describing neighbourhood stressors and four clusters describing neighbourhood assets resulted in two potential strategies, a Crescent Town Residents’ Association and a community fair to promote neighbourhood resources and build social networks. This piloted methodology ultimately cultivated an opportunity for neighbourhood members to continue collaboratively planning asset-based solutions for resiliency and stress