Facebook and Politicians

About a month ago I reported in this blog on the social media acumen of the currently seated City of Cincinnati Council members and the two mayoral candidates. The point was to demonstrate if those politicians were aware of the reach of social media, and were they inclined to use it as a way to communicate with their constituency. The results were mixed and I found them interesting. Although the use of Facebook is hardly a determination of ones political worth, I think it does show a willingness on the part of the politician to capitalize on 21st century technology to open avenues of dialogue with their constituency.

Approximately a month has passed since that report . Since then I have expanded the experiment by posting a friend request to every council candidate. The results were interesting. By and large, most challengers were quick to respond to my friend request. Needless to say, since then my news feed has been inundated by political ads and cutesy photographs intended to demonstrate how down to earth this or that candidate really is. I do not think one should or should not vote for a candidate based solely on the results of the”friending test”. T do think it is a point of consideration, when looking at all the points of consideration for determining how to cast your vote. In the results below, I will lump all candidate together since they are no all candidates for council. I will not separate the incumbents from the challengers. They fall in several categories, as indicated below.

• Accepted Friend Request, in no particular order: Charlie Winburn, , Wendell Young, Yvette Simpson, Greg Landsman, Kevin Flynn, John Cranley, Shawn Butler, Kevin Johnson, Melissa Wegman, Vanessa White, Michelle Dillingham, Amy Murray, Tim Dornbusch, and Angela Beamon
• Has not accepted Friend request, in no particular order: P.G. Sittenfeld , Chris Seelbachm, Laure Quinlaven, Sam Malone,
• Does not have a personal page, but has a Facebook presence (unable to make a friend request): Roxannne Qualls and David Mann
• Does not have a Facebook page: Pamela Thomas
• Other: Christopher Smitherman has a Facebook page but is at his 5000 friend limit. He did however, ignore my message to him and emails to him,

Laure Quinlaven gets honorable mention here. She received a friend request from me well in advance of any of the others. This was because she was the subject of a blog article authored back during the budget season. I felt compelled to bring it to everyone’s attention her desire to lay off police and fire personnel. I submitted a friend request at that time out of fairness. I wanted to give her the opportunity to not only read the blog article, but to respond, should she so desire. I do not know if she read the article, but I do know she did not respond and to this day my friend request is still pending. Come on Laure, it’s not personal.

There you have it friends, the results of the unofficial and unscientific Townehouse Phoenix social media litmus test for local politicians. Now you are fully armed for election day. Happy Voting!

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?

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