Elections are over, but engagement is not

By Jennifer Castro

The day after an election might almost feel as good as waking up on Christmas -it’s peaceful yet exciting knowing that you will no longer be exposed to political television, social media, and mailer marketing ads – for a while. In Alaska where I live, the campaigns were fiercely competitive with the state of the state having a challenging economy, soaring crime rates, and a lot of unknowns about what to do next, determining who can help lead us out of this mess.

As I was enjoying my morning coffee and few moments of post-election silence, I opened my Facebook feed. My “silence” was interrupted with a suggested notification from Facebook saying, “you have newly elected representatives, find out who represents your district.” I was curious to know if Facebook had received and updated my state’s election information already, so I clicked on the notification link. It brought me to “Town Hall,” a Facebook tool that shows me who my current elected officials are and allows me to directly follow their feeds. It was super convenient and just a few clicks – the approach was not politically aggressive by any means. I had never seen this feature on Facebook before so I wanted to investigate and learn a little bit more about it.

The Town Hall tool shows me my government representatives in my area.

According to Facebook’s website, the Town Hall tool is meant to help people find, follow and contact their government officials. By creating this accessibility, the big picture goal of Facebook Town Hall is to improve civic engagement and to give users a voice in their local, state, and federal government. Some of the limitations of this tool is if a government leader or agency does not have a Facebook feed, or hasn’t officially started in office yet. Town Hall was actually launched in March of 2017, but with hundreds of local, state, and congressional primaries occurring yesterday, I’m sure this tool and Facebook’s push of it will help it gain more ground this week.

As a consumer I thought this tool was easy to use, and I was grateful for the simple awareness it created. You can find the “Town Hall” tool in your profile menu tab bar. You can also adjust features in it such as your location, and adjust the voting reminder notifications for your area elections by turning them on or off.

Facebook users can adjust their Town Hall settings including the location and voting reminders.

Some follow up questions for you:

• Have you heard of the Town Hall Facebook tool prior to this blog?
• Do you think the tool is helpful for citizens to have more access to their government leaders and representatives?
• Are there other tools or examples that you know of that provide citizens with direct access to their government officials?
• Do you have any government officials in your area that are not on Facebook?

References:

Facebook (2018, November 7). Town Hall. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/townhall

Feinn, L. (2017, March 15) How to Use the Facebook “Town Hall” Feature to Contact your Representatives. Retrieved from: https://www.bustle.com/p/how-to-use-the-facebook-town-hall-feature-to-call-your-representatives-44828