Facebook Builds Ties With ABC News

Students who spend hours looking at profiles on Facebook.com—the popular social networking site founded at Harvard—can now employ their stalker talents to follow the 2008 presidential election.

Facebook and ABC News have recently added a new feature to the Facebook application “U.S. Politics,” in which 13 ABC reporters will regularly update their Facebook profiles with news and videos about the presidential candidates they tail.

Facebook and ABC News also announced on Monday that they would co-sponsor two presidential debates in New Hampshire on January 5, only three days before the primary election.

“I’m all for it,” said Washington Post reporter Maralee Schwartz, an IOP fellow who leads a study group on connecting politicians with voters. “These kids do not turn on ABC Nightly News, so it works for the students because they can get some political information.”

The collaboration is a sign that Facebook is taking on a new role by promoting political discussion on its network, said John G. Palfrey, Jr. ’94, the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a professor at Harvard Law School.

“It would be a very good sign for American politics if we saw more young people engage in political discussion,” he added.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a political reporter for The Washington Post, believes that the application could even increase the number of young voters.

“There’s still plenty of students out there who aren’t politically active, and all it takes now is one click,” he said. “We live in a clickable democracy.”

One of ABC’s participating reporters is Sunlen M. Miller, who covers Barack Obama’s campaign.

Miller said she updates her Facebook page daily, and has communicated with Facebook users who ask her questions about the campaign through private messages or on her wall.

“Facebook is a great way for me to do additional reporting on something that doesn’t get space on the ABC Web site,” she said.

Not all politicos, however, are quick to sing the praises of the collaboration.

Jarret A. Zafran ’09, president of Harvard Democrats, doubts the application will have much impact at Harvard. He said that Harvard is already saturated with political information.

“The campus is very politically active as it is,” he said, saying that the “U.S. Politics” application on Facebook could be better used as a tool for campaign managers to contact potential volunteers and gather information on their constituency.