Shepherding and Censorship: Discourse Management in the Tea Party Patriots Facebook Group

Political groups on social networking sites enable a new type of collaborative, political discourse among citizens. In this study, we show how political discourse in social media is distinct from prior studies of political groups on the Internet. Specifically, we use network analysis in combination with communication theory to examine conversational social networks that emerge from direct addressals between participants in 10 discussions on the Tea Party Patriots Face book page associated with the shooting of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Our findings identify singling out of other participants as a key tactic for clarifying and questioning inaccurate information, apply social network analysis to identify different behaviors between networks and describe the elimination of dissent from the Tea Party Patriots Face book page over time. Important questions of how users experience political discourse online, including the impact of the traceless removal of discourse by group administrators are framed in the conclusion.