Among the most popular media websites, Facebook is ranking high. This year, it launched several features, which make it easier for people to reach government representatives on the social network, which include ‘Town Hall’. Related integrations with News Feed enables sharing representatives contact information in posts.
FACEBOOK IS EXPANDING ON FEATURES FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS
These days, Facebook is expanding on initiatives designed for elected officials. The new tools help government officials reach their constituents and to understand which issues that their constituents care the most as well. In particular, FB, one of the top social media sites is rolling out three new features, namely, constituent badges, insights and district targeting. The primary objective of the new features is to help politicians connect with constituents in their district better. However, at a deeper level, FB makes it easier than ever for the officials to acquire insight into the behaviors and thoughts that drive their communities, transform the social network into a gold mine of data to predict voter behavior as well as all kinds of other relevant political findings. Moreover, the new looks are an expansion of the existing Town Hall feature, which was first introduced in March. It is a way for users to connect and reach out to local representatives better through FB. It is all part of the wider effort to help make the social media site a tool for enhancing civic discourse.
The first feature is the Constituent badges. A new, opt-in feature which allow FB users to identify themselves as living in the district where the elected official represents. The social media giant determines if someone is a constituent or otherwise based on the address provided in Town Hall or being part of the process that’s used to turn on badges. Although anyone pretend to be a constituent and enter a fake address, FB has put controls in place for limiting the bad actors. Users could only be a verified constituent based on a single address at a time. Moreover, if a person changes the address, the badge is removed from prior posts. Also, FB limits the amount of time that an address could be changed. The badges is to make it easier for officials to find out which questions, comments and concerns are shared by the people that they actually represent. Whether they will treat the sentiments with the same degree of relevance or not as they would an email, letter or phone call remains to be seen. Users would be prompted to turn on constituent badges when they make a comment or like posts by their representatives via a unit, which appears on the page. User alternately could go to the Town Hall section to turn on the badge themselves. As soon as enabled, the badges would appear anytime someone comments on shared content by their own reps.
The second feature is the Constituent insights. It’s designed to help officials find out which local news content and stories are popular in their area so they could share their ideas and thoughts on these matters. This would be available via a new Page Insight feature, which is available to Page admins that include a section that could be scrolled horizontally wherein locally trending stories and news appear. The elected officials could click a link to post the story to their FB page, together with their thoughts about it. In addition, constituents could browse through the same stories on a new Community tab on the FB page of the official.
The third feature is the District Targeting feature, which arguably is the most notable. The feature provides elected officials a means of gathering feedback from constituents effectively and directly via Facebook, using posts or polls targeted only towards those actually living in their specific district. This means that the government official could post to the social media site to ask for constituents’ feedback regarding an issue. These posts would be viewable to those who are living in their district only. Definitely, this also means that the official will be taking an active and even proactive role when it comes to engaging with the constituent base and their community, instead of waiting for constituents to proceed to their office with their thoughts, which often is the case nowadays.
Today, rather than seeing faces and names of potential constituents, officials elected to their posts could see a special badge designating a user as someone living in their district. The features will cut down those pretending to be in a district that they really do not belong into. All of the features combined offer a very powerful tool for politicians to start engaging more deeply with the people, as well as learning from them. Overall, the Town Hall combination with the new features targeted towards government officials represent Facebook’s growing effort to be move involved in the political process as well as the dialog that surrounds policy issues.
FACEBOOK IS EXPANDING ON FEATURES FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS
These days, Facebook is expanding on initiatives designed for elected officials. The new tools help government officials reach their constituents and to understand which issues that their constituents care the most as well. In particular, FB, one of the top social media sites is rolling out three new features, namely, constituent badges, insights and district targeting. The primary objective of the new features is to help politicians connect with constituents in their district better. However, at a deeper level, FB makes it easier than ever for the officials to acquire insight into the behaviors and thoughts that drive their communities, transform the social network into a gold mine of data to predict voter behavior as well as all kinds of other relevant political findings. Moreover, the new looks are an expansion of the existing Town Hall feature, which was first introduced in March. It is a way for users to connect and reach out to local representatives better through FB. It is all part of the wider effort to help make the social media site a tool for enhancing civic discourse.
The first feature is the Constituent badges. A new, opt-in feature which allow FB users to identify themselves as living in the district where the elected official represents. The social media giant determines if someone is a constituent or otherwise based on the address provided in Town Hall or being part of the process that’s used to turn on badges. Although anyone pretend to be a constituent and enter a fake address, FB has put controls in place for limiting the bad actors. Users could only be a verified constituent based on a single address at a time. Moreover, if a person changes the address, the badge is removed from prior posts. Also, FB limits the amount of time that an address could be changed. The badges is to make it easier for officials to find out which questions, comments and concerns are shared by the people that they actually represent. Whether they will treat the sentiments with the same degree of relevance or not as they would an email, letter or phone call remains to be seen. Users would be prompted to turn on constituent badges when they make a comment or like posts by their representatives via a unit, which appears on the page. User alternately could go to the Town Hall section to turn on the badge themselves. As soon as enabled, the badges would appear anytime someone comments on shared content by their own reps.
The second feature is the Constituent insights. It’s designed to help officials find out which local news content and stories are popular in their area so they could share their ideas and thoughts on these matters. This would be available via a new Page Insight feature, which is available to Page admins that include a section that could be scrolled horizontally wherein locally trending stories and news appear. The elected officials could click a link to post the story to their FB page, together with their thoughts about it. In addition, constituents could browse through the same stories on a new Community tab on the FB page of the official.
The third feature is the District Targeting feature, which arguably is the most notable. The feature provides elected officials a means of gathering feedback from constituents effectively and directly via Facebook, using posts or polls targeted only towards those actually living in their specific district. This means that the government official could post to the social media site to ask for constituents’ feedback regarding an issue. These posts would be viewable to those who are living in their district only. Definitely, this also means that the official will be taking an active and even proactive role when it comes to engaging with the constituent base and their community, instead of waiting for constituents to proceed to their office with their thoughts, which often is the case nowadays.
Today, rather than seeing faces and names of potential constituents, officials elected to their posts could see a special badge designating a user as someone living in their district. The features will cut down those pretending to be in a district that they really do not belong into. All of the features combined offer a very powerful tool for politicians to start engaging more deeply with the people, as well as learning from them. Overall, the Town Hall combination with the new features targeted towards government officials represent Facebook’s growing effort to be move involved in the political process as well as the dialog that surrounds policy issues.
