It has not been a good month for Jeremy Hunt. The UK Health Secretary had NHS medical staff in uproar after making insensitive comments about their work ethic. In a speech about NHS reforms aiming to provide better seven-day care for patients, Hunt caused an outcry with his remarks about there being a “Monday to Friday culture” in some parts of the NHS.

His comments sparked the #ImInWorkJeremy campaign, where medical staff posted photos of themselves working at the weekend to prove that being a doctor is not a 9 to 5 job. The hashtag was used 144,884 times over Saturday and Sunday alone.

The situation grew steadily worse, and last week staff were calling for Hunt’s resignation using the #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy hashtag.

Using Visibrain, we can look back over the last ten days and nearly 250,000 tweets to find out how NHS staff used Twitter to take on Jeremy Hunt.

Twitter explodes over the weekend with #ImInWorkJeremy tweets

Hunt delivered his speech on July 16th, and by the following morning, #ImInWorkJeremy was born. The first tweet using the hashtag was posted on Friday morning at 9.53 by @ImInWorkJeremy, an account created especially for the campaign:

This weekend, July 18th 2015 is the day we #NHS staff let Jeremy Hunt know that we are actually in work. On a Saturday. #ImInWorkJeremy

— ImInWork Jeremy (@IminworkJeremy) July 17, 2015

Over the rest of the day, #ImInWorkJeremy was used 2,596 times, as staff encouraged each other to tweet using the hashtag.

All hospital and GP staff working this weekend, please use #ImInWorkJeremy &correct his misconception about a Mon-Fri NHS

— Dr Zoe Norris (@dr_zo) July 17, 2015

Over Saturday and Sunday, #ImInWorkJeremy was trending as medical staff took to Twitter with photos and messages calling Hunt out on his insensitive comments. The number of tweets spiked from 6 am on the Saturday morning and continued steadily throughout the day.

After a brief lull in the early hours of Sunday morning, activity picked up again for the rest of the weekend.

Although the event was covered on Twitter by highly influential media accounts such as the BBC, the top tweets for the weekend are all scathing posts from doctors and their families.

Hunt tries to join the conversation

So how did Jeremy Hunt handle the crisis? If we focus on tweets sent from the @Jeremy_Hunt Twitter handle, we can see that the Health Secretary only tweeted twice over the weekend, and only one post concerned the general outcry:

To drs on shift 2day: thx 4 ur hard work. Now we need 2 reflect that professionalism wth modern contract 2 make NHS safer!#ImInWorkJeremy

— Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) July 18, 2015

Perhaps not the apology that NHS staff were hoping for. His attempt to smooth things over was not well-received:

Hunt’s account has been silent ever since, but his silence didn’t help the situation. If we look at the most retweeted posts mentioning @Jeremy_Hunt, @cpeedell comes in 1st with his tweet calling for Hunt to step down:

The post was retweeted 1,140 times, which might have been a sign of things to come.

Things go from bad to worse with #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy

By the end of the weekend activity had understandably died down, but it didn’t mean it was all over for the Health Secretary. The campaign took a different turn last week, evolving into a full-scale call for Jeremy Hunt’s resignation.

On Monday July 20th, the #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy appeared, posted for the first time by @butNHS at 3.21 pm.

The tweet links to a petition voting for Jeremy Hunt’s resignation, which had nearly 200,000 signatures at the time this article was written.

The government’s response to these petitions was deemed disappointing to say the least, simply restating Mr. Hunt’s arguments without acknowledging problems pointed out by NHS staff. This lack of adequate response may have led to the escalation of the second part of the Jeremy Hunt campaign.

A lack of response that fueled doctor’s anger

The #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy hashtag got off to a slow start, as it was used only 2,885 times between Monday and Friday. However, the government’s poor response to the petition left campaigners feeling unheard, and spurred the #weneedtototalkaboutjeremy campaign to greater heights. The hashtag exploded over this weekend, bringing the total number of uses to 38,555.

The spike in the number of tweets was caused by a Twitter debate organized by @butNHS for Sunday 26th July. Their post encouraging people to take part was the second most retweeted of the week.

I would be really grateful for as many RTs of this as possible BEFORE we start #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy at 8pm. pic.twitter.com/dmsBRKzO3A

— Big up the NHS (@butNHS) July 26, 2015

There were 27,896 tweets using the #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy hashtag between 8 pm and midnight on Sunday.

So who was leading the #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy movement? @danfurmedge, creator of one of the two petitions against Jeremy Hunt, appears in the top 5. Although he only has 1,118 followers, Furmedge’s frequent tweeting and high number of mentions make him one of the top influencers of last week’s campaign.

If we filter on links in tweets mentioning the @danfurmedge Twitter handle, the most retweeted is a link to a dedicated website, featuring a well-written counter-response to the Government’s original response to the campaign petition.

A campaign that struggled to maintain its momentum

Unfortunately for its supporters, #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy didn’t generate the same social hype as #ImInWorkJeremy. We can see below that over fifty percent of users tweeting about the campaign had very low or very low audiences (meaning 250 followers or less), showing that although the campaign for Jeremy Hunt’s resignation was hugely supported by the grass-roots medical community, the movement didn’t have as much reach as #ImInWorkJeremy.

Just 3% of users tweeting about the campaign last week had over 5000 followers.

The overall number of tweets was also much lower for this weekend. If we use the Visibrain Quick Trends feature to compare the overall impact of the #ImInWorkJeremy and the #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy hashtags over the last ten days, the graph below speaks for itself.

The #weneedtotalkaboutjeremy campaign may not have had quite as much impact as its counterpart, but the combined reach of both campaigns is still impressive and has managed to keep the conversation going over the last week.

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The #ImInWorkJeremy campaign is a typical example of how poor management can make a negative situation on Twitter go from bad to worse. An adequate apology from Jeremy Hunt and a more open, humane response from the government could perhaps have nipped the entire campaign in the bud.

With the tweets still coming in and the two petitions for Jeremy Hunt’s resignation having reached nearly 300,000 signatures, only time will tell if all of the negative press will force the Health Secretary out of office.

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