Facebook is becoming a core component for social movements, from constituent outreach for political campaigns to building support and for causes, says Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications for Facebook. A growing number of people are discovering that Facebook, with its 350 million members, "is about way more than simply connecting with friends," Noyes said.
Casey Allen Sears, a student at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., helped start a Facebook group this month in opposition to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's letter about discrimination policies at state public universities. Cuccinelli wrote that Virginia's public universities could not adopt policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation "absent specific authorization from the General Assembly." The Facebook group promoted a protest against Cuccinelli's assertion that public universities should back away from policies against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. "In the 48 hours from the creation of the event, we had more than 700 people saying they were attending," Sears said. "It's really easy to organize a mass movement."
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