Tea Party on the march

They have been angry. They have protested. Now, according to The Washington Post, they are organizing to win in 2010. Apparently, standard Republican members of congress are no more safe than Democrats.

And I decided I should get to collecting #teaparty messages.

I checked for search phrases using Twendz and TweetVolume. "tea party" tends to bring in some messages that have nothing to do with the conservative political action. But #teaparty leaves out messages that use "tea party" and not #teaparty. Then I used Archivist to search for each. #teaparty got to 1500 messages a day earlier than "tea party" and than "tea party OR #teaparty." I decided to, at least, start by collecting all three

"tea party OR #teaparty", "tea party" and "#teaparty" are the search phrases.

I made the first search with "tea party OR #teaparty" at 9:50 a.m. Central on December 10, 2009. Archivist pulled up 1500 messages with the first search. They ranged back to 2:16 p.m. December 8, 2009. "tea party" pulled up 1500 messages ranging back to 1:50 on December 8. #teaparty got to 1500 ranging back to 2:58 p.m. December 9 -- a whole day earlier.

I found that #tpp [tea party patriots] was also popular -- though not as popular as #teaparty. So I added a second search #tpp OR #teaparty. That was a couple of days later.

I am now searching two streams: #teaparty and #tpp OR #teaparty.

I thought something was wrong with my searching because there seemed to be so much day to day volatility. I decided to check #teaparty at Twendistic. This is the daily distribution for #teaparty for 30 days.

It has the same day to day volatility that I found -- reassuring me that I was not causing a 'problem.'