Social Media and the Tea Party

For those that doubt that social media technology is having an effect in Iran just take a look at a similar event here in the United states. Social Media had a huge impact in the organization of the Tea Parties that occurred on tax day at over 800 simultaneous events across the country. Just Google (or Bing) the word "teaparty"

In a contrasting opinion from Speaker Pelosi : … "This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end — we call call it astroturf, it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of

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for the great middle class."

"Astroturf", it may or may not have been, but regardless of which side of the political debate one falls on [this is intended to be a technology blog], the technology was used for the organizing The Tea Party event strongly utilized Social Media technology. And those taking exception to the tea parties used the same technology as can be shown from the Huffington Post with the qoute
"More than 2,000 HuffPost citizen journalists signed up to report on their local tea parties, sending photos, videos, and written dispatches, and we've already received hundreds of photos"

To be technologically correct, AstroTurf is a brand of artificial turf. And Wikipedia defines "Astroturfing is a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf".