Wednesday, April 6, 2011
the whitehouse invited me!
The world is changing all the time, and the social network scene tends to be the place to be these days. Social networking is a way to keep in touch, keep tabs on, keep close in mind, to those you may be distanced with by the physical world. I am personally impressed with, and my parents or grandparents might perhaps disagree,the level of social networking capability that our President Obama chooses to utilize in an effort to remain accessible. When someone really takes a minute to contemplate in which situations the average American has to reach out to and bounce ideas off of the President of the United States, there are very few. Postal mail seems to be so ancient these days, and chances are any letter that an opinionated American chooses to write to the President won’t even reach the President’s eyes and last I checked President Obama’s personal email is not listed on any contacts page on the Whitehouse website. Imagine my surprise to find that the last time I checked my twitter account (@JackieDelMonte feel free to follow me), that I had been invited to a nationwide town-hall style meeting located on Facebook in a week and a half. The Whitehouse tweet reads: “Not your average facebook invite: Join President Obama's Town Hall @facebook HQ. RSVP now: http://on.fb.me/fplXJH” Believe it or not, our President is going to be holding a live Facebook hosted town meeting. Facebook will be selecting questions for the town meeting, and you can post the questions right on the wall for the Facebook event. The guest list currently reads, 7,622 currently attending, 1,164 maybe attending, and 12,821 currently awaiting RSVP. If in any way a guest list of that magnitude makes you doubtful that your question would be chosen from the event wall, you may also submit your questions directly to: whitehouse.gov/facebooktownhall. I felt the need to blog about this because blogs are one way of utilizing technology to communicate politically, and now I guess country-wide live Facebook town-hall style meetings are too.
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6 comments:
I agree i feel that Obama being involved in social networking is a great way to campaign and good way to interact with the younger generation that may increase the the voter turnout in America
Social networking via Facebook and Twitter has proven to be highly effective in terms of celebrities informing the general public of their whereabouts these day, so I guess it makes sense that President Obama is also choosing this medium to communicate with his constituents. While not every U.S. citizen has turned to the internet (specifically the older generations), I think this is a great start!
I'm not sure how beneficial such an online meeting will be (especially when there are thousands of people attending), but it definitely is a good source of press. It will be interesting to see which questions are answered and if the president was prepped for those particular questions ahead of time.
agreed that it may not be the most effective of efforts, and i am sure that he will have some sort of prep either way on a few key questions or points to be brought up.. however, i do feel like it is a step in the right direction, which may just be to remind American's that their president has not forgot about the everyday American, at the very least.
I think Facebook is a great source to reach the younger generation. In today's class we discussed that the older generation votes way more than the 18-25 age group. Our generation lives through technology. Where would we be without our cellphones and Facebook? Its our main source for communication. This is a great way for the younger generation's questions to be answered by the President himself in our "territory."
I love how accessible we are to our government today. I also follow President Obama, as well as Annie Kuster and congressional Roll Call. It's a great way to get minute to minute up dates on what is going on in our government. Social media has greatly improved our political activism and connection with government. Pamphlets in the mail are costly and usually get thrown away. Emails are easily deleted and go unread. A 140 character twitter status or a short Facebook status is perfect to get across the basic point of an issue or platform, and if people want to learn more, they have the ability to go to the candidates website and learn more.
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