Practicum #6 - Julia

As Joanne's life in the social networking world expands, due to her interests in the Tea Party movement, she's really coming to understand the power of social media. It not only brings people together to socialize, but brings people together to mobilize. Twitter has been an amazing tool for Joanne to get involved with. Within approximately one week of joining Twitter, Joanne accumulated 5 followers! This was without having even "tweeted" at the people she has chosen to follow. Instead, the people she requested to follow reached out to her to follow her, bringing her into their online community. They share videos, articles, and information on local events all based around the Tea Party Movement.

If the Internet has changed the way that political movements get out their message and interact with their supporters, social media has revolutionized the way supporters communicate with one another--perhaps an even more monumental change in our society. A movement like the Tea Party would have taken much longer to organize itself and mobilize without the internet and social media. Because it is made up of dozens of individual movement throughout the US, the movement needed a central, uniting force: the internet. They do not seem to have one specific leader...instead they use the internet to get out their message and garner support for specific candidates. But of course, this is nature of the Internet and its development, so it only makes sense that this is the way that the development that political movements' use of the Internet is going.