Jeff Bennett's Blog

In the latest example of social media can capture sentiment and spread it around the globe quickly – yesterday several “Tea Parties” were organized across the U.S. to protest the massive size of the Obama stimulus package – and social media was an enabling force behind the wave of this activity.

The tea parties were catalyzed by the widely seen screed by CNBC personality Rick Santelli, in which he jokingly suggested he’d organize a Chicago tea party to protest what he saw as the president’s plan to “subsidize the losers’ mortgages.”   The idea is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, the famous revolutionary-era event in which American colonists dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor to protest oppressive taxation policies by the British government.

The protests ocurred across the U.S. in Tulsa, Austin, Nashville, Chicago, Lansing, Houston, Hartford, Los Angeles and other locations.  On their own these protests were small and under the radar of the mainstream media.  Anyone connected to the Internet in offices and schools around the U.S. probably got drawn into “virtual” protests as well.   I for one received over twenty emails, five im’s and a few text messages about stimulus resistance.  I was not on Twitter yesterday but colleagues who were indicate that the “tea parties” were pervasive.  Photos were being uploaded and shared on Flickr and videos on YouTube.  The result is that social media enabled, networked and integrated geographically distributed events (online and offline) in lightening speed.

The spending bill is surely “stimulating” peoples emotions and showing us another powerful example of social media today.