The American Idea in 140 Characters

“Thinking we’re only one signature away from ending the war in Iraq.” With this message in April 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama began the very first Twitter campaign for president and, in the process, launched one of the first demonstrations of the power of the social-media platform to influence politics and political debate.

Obama’s first tweet came little more than a year after Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet on March 21, 2006. In the 10 years since, Twitter has grown into a force that has bolstered grassroots conversations, disrupted the top-down nature of political leadership and thought, and given voice to groups long hidden on the political periphery. And while that may describe the kind of discourse-democratizing revolution many have been clamoring for, that revolution comes with an all-out, bloody fight over identity, power, and the very future of politics. What has the first decade of Twitter brought us?

Obama’s first campaign only came during