Facebook Friday: Yet Another Take on Facebook and Politics - Votes Aside, the Value's in the Buzz

Yet to live up to its potential as a venue for political activism, the viral nature of Facebook.com brings politics and political views into focus for undergrads

Daily I’m bombarded with Facebook group requests, application invites, and messages from friends and candidates in attempts to recruit and more importantly, maintain support for their causes or campaigns. Sometimes reaching the inbox through auto-generated emails, my Facebook experiences have continually managed to introduce and keep politics, whether presidential or individual political leanings, on the computer screen and on the brain. Though there’s been skepticism as to whether or not Facebook.com functions well outside the social networking mindset, the impact that Facebook has on youth and politics manifests itself in this viral manner of messages, requests, and reminders through one’s social network much more clearly than the effects it has or will have on getting actual votes in 2008 or inspiring political activism off-line.

A much-understated aspect of Facebook’s influence is the fact that it is a forum in which incoming college students and new users could be introduced and initially confronted with politics. A seventeen year-old college freshman is painstakingly putting together his or her Facebook profile for the first time and is suddenly propositioned to choose his or her political views. Located just a few lines beneath their name and school, their political affiliation will feature prominently in new friends’ first impressions. While I’m aware that many are introduced to or engaged in politics far prior to joining Facebook, whether through school or at home, there are many who have not yet faced the decision to define themselves politically. They are forced to question their peers, their parents or themselves as to what exactly choosing “liberal” or “conservative” would entail. They’re more likely to notice what political views their friends have chosen and perhaps wondering why such choices were made. Facebook also notably chose to place this field under “basic information”, which psychologically – if it’s really so “basic” – could push even more users to make the choice to define themselves politically. It would be a stretch to state that this initiation into the world of Facebook has or will have a discernible impact on introducing the youngest voters to politics. One could also argue that the college environment itself inspires the interest in politics, but this potential newfound political buzz is worthy of note and potential study as Facebook spreads among college and high school students.

Beyond the concept of this initiation are the details. The political views field itself on Facebook is a little constraining as it offers a limited eight options to choose from - including “liberal”, “conservative”, “apathetic” or the ever-exhilarating “other.” The religious views field gives the option for custom-text – as it should – but for some reason the folks at Facebook deemed custom-text a bit much when dealing with political views. While this minimal array of choices may just be a tactic to serve better demographic information for advertising, it still places certain constraints on users who may want to say more about themselves than “other”.

Also noteworthy is the fact that with this recently popularized social networking technology, we – or Facebook employees, depending on privacy settings – have access to these statistics on users’ political views. There are now ways to obtain quick stats out there on the web for the chosen political views broken down by age group, geographic location, level of education or college sophomores who list “very liberal” yet cite Reagan in their “favorite quotes” section (it could happen?). The wide array of user networks that Facebook supports offer great insights into the social and political tendencies of the users. At this point, the user-base represents a fairly large and growing slice of the American public and more specifically, a youthful demographic generally charged with low voter-turnout.

There is also the possibility or potential to track the changing political views of America’s youth as they graduate college, embark on different career paths, start families or age in general. This is, of course, assuming that the generation that made Facebook popular continues on with the social networking fad as they age, which yet to be determined. Sticking with the hypothetical that Facebook maintains its popularity, I must note that one of my father’s favorite quotes is “If you’re under the age of 25 and a Republican, you’re insensitive, but if you’re over the age of 25 and a Democrat, you’re ignorant.” Will the adage hold true as those in their mid-twenties begin get the feeling they have something to lose with higher taxes or bigger government? Tough to say and a bit beside the point – but the sociological studies of shifting political affiliations as they relate to age or geography, for example, could only be enhanced by including this information.

Others would make the claim that this information gathered from Facebook would not necessarily be as reliable as anonymous polling because it is a social space and not well-utilized as a political forum. To these critics, one must ask, what would users have to gain by misrepresenting themselves when they have the choice not to display their political view at all? The privacy issue is also fairly controversial, as one would think no one has the given right to mine this data, but social scientists have indeed been utilizing Facebook to examine social interactions and to study how exactly traditional theories about relationships, identity, collective action and political engagement hold in these relatively new online social forums. Also, Facebook has no policy that prohibits academic research involving user profiles given that these users have not activated certain privacy settings.

Returning to the issue of mobilizing voters, many questions have concerned what role Facebook groups will play in the 2008 Presidential election. Once again the statistics are and will be very inconclusive as there is no concrete way to measure Facebook activity or engagement as it relates to voter turnout. Groups do serve as a means to distribute candidate information as well as draw the attention of supporters to one page. However, the unfortunate reality of Facebook groups is that they are not very engaging and seem to serve more as a social “tag” or label on a Facebook user’s profile. While there is space to post videos or links as well as a discussion board, the lack of any logical organization other than chronological order really detracts from the interaction of the group members with eachother or with the issues the candidate puts forth. If I was a young, potential Barack Obama supporter and my hot issue was healthcare, there is nothing jumping out at me at first glance on this group page. I would have to muck through the discussion board and do a text-search for my issue. At surface, this may not seem like a huge barrier in getting through to voters. However, minding the fact that Facebook is first and foremost a social space and most users maintain that mindset, it should be as easy and quick as possible for a member to initially connect to the group on a personal level.

One notable group spawning from the 2008 Presidential Election is “1,000,000 Strong for Barack.” Was that group membership benchmark met? Not quite yet – membership currently hovers in between 400,000-500,000 users. Comedian Stephen Colbert’s brief run at the Presidency did, however, produce a “1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert” and membership shot up to about 1,500,000 users before he abandoned his Presidential bid in early November 2007 when the South Carolina Democratic Party denied him a spot on the ballot. This more or less fake campaign was likely able to attract that many Facebook users to its cause because it takes much less thought or research to back a fake candidate than it would to actually take the time to choose to support a “real” candidate. This instance attests to the social networking nature of Facebook – the satirical concept of Stephen Colbert running for President was quicker to whip young users into a group-joining frenzy without thought, whereas Barack Obama – touting the largest membership of a supporting Facebook group over other candidates – couldn’t get near the same numbers.

Then, of course, there is the bottom line that despite the widespread youth support on Facebook, Colbert’s candidacy never did quite get off the ground. College students nationwide were supporting him and actively recruiting to his cause online, but it would seem as though none were motivated enough by his online presence to make a concerted effort off-line – where it mattered – to petition the South Carolina Democratic Party to put him on the ballot.

A popular blog covering social networking sites, Mashable.com, conducted a poll in October 2007 as to what effect Facebook campaigning will have on politics and the majority of responses fell under the “it might have a minor impact” category over “it will sway the vote” and “there will be no effect.” These results indicate that there is a belief that the potential is there for Facebook and social networking sites in general to have an impact – though by and large, Mashable-readers are tech-savvy themselves and would have a greater tendency to believe this is the case. Whether Facebook and political campaigns are really capitalizing on this potential is the underlying issue. Facebook is still generally considered a social space by its young user-base, and the groups and applications require no more real effort to join and maintain membership than a mouse-click -- a point which makes transferring the force of online enthusiasm into off-line political activity less likely. Where Facebook does succeed is in the introduction to and continual reminders of political events, political leanings and politics in general among undergrads nationwide. Whether or not this constant buzz boosts the impact of Facebook on politics and elections in the coming years remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: in order for Facebook to become more relevant and live up to its potential in the realm of politics, it will need to introduce a politically functional offshoot with more engaging user-forums for debate and recruitment that continue to fully utilize the strong social networks users have built.