week 6 - tea party movement

The tea party movement is a political movement generally recognised as conservative and libertarian and associate themselves as republicans. The modern day tea parties were established not long after the election of Barack Obama to the White House. The tea parties are in reference to the Boston tea party - a protest by colonists who objected to a British tax on tea in 1773 and demonstrated by dumping British tea into the harbour. The tea party has no central leadership but it is composed of a loose affiliation of national local groups that determine their own platforms and agendas.

The tea party patriots (http://teapartypatriots.ning.com/) is the official home of the American tea party movement, the tea party patriots slogan is ‘’A community committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded!’’

This website makes use of various forms of media such as photos, videos, blog posts, and forums to attract the attention of the public and influence membership for the movement. However you are required to register to become a member in order to access this material. This may have been done to ensure that opposition are unable to comment and turn members against the movement and dissuade people from joining. However this may also backfire as people are less likely to bother joining in order to search the website, people are more likely to join if they are able to access the site freely and browse the material without registering and then make a decision to join.

Once I joined the site and became a member I was able to get full access to the material available on the site, I browsed through the photos and found many people had uploaded photos of themselves and others at protests and campaigns and also many had uploaded propaganda images persuading people to join the tea party movement, however these photos are only available to existing members and are more aimed at those who have not yet joined and are thinking about joining. Therefore this purpose has been defeated. There are also many blogs and forums which discuss the main points that surround the tea party movement, discussions particularly on taxes, government spending, anti – Obama related topics and immigration related topics.