Practicum #1 - Julia

My Practicum project will revolve around how Political/Activist organizations use Social Media and the internet in getting across their messages and in communicating with one another. I've chosen to focus on the Tea Party Movement, a group that has received a lot of media attention in the last few months.

I've begun my research by using the "tool" that any inquiring person with a computer would do in today's time: Google. Google pointed me in the direction of Wikipedia (among other sites), which provided a comprehensive look at the Tea Party, which included topic headings such as "Background & History," "Effects on 2010 mid-term election cycle," and "Controversies." After this preliminary information-gathering, I proceeded to check out the dozens of other websites devoted to advancing the agenda of the Tea Party and realized that this organization is actually the perfect subject for this project. It is my guess that the Tea Party would not have been able to come into existence, garner as much attention, or recruit as many followers had it not been for the communicative tools that the internet provides to people.

The Tea Party consists of hundreds of grass-roots movements all over the nation, without any central leadership, promoting extreme conservative ideals (limiting government, lowering taxes, etc.) under the inspiration of pre-American Revolutionary ideals (hence the name, coming from the Boston Tea Party event in 1773).

On Facebook, the Tea Party's biggest Fan Page (one of MANY) has almost 500,000 "likes," with significant user participation by the minute. When I searched on Twitter for Tea Party tweeters, there were probably almost 100 people tweeting for different Tea Party factions across the country.

I'm excited to delve deeper into my research on the Tea Party, and to inform my classmates about how powerful a tool the internet and social media are in advancing the agendas of political organizations.