Interactive Fireside Chats

I wonder if the findings from Lazer, Neblo, Esterling, and Goldschmidt’s research on online town hall meetings could be applied to a sort of Fireside Chat. The town hall meetings studied attracted a demographic that is less politically active and made participants feel more connected to their representative or senator. This seems to be a very promising finding, and the town hall meetings could be applied as a standard part of running for a position or maintaining support while holding office. It also seems promising to engage younger voters, minorities, and others that less often vote. While every president since FDR has given regular addresses, I wonder how well they penetrate the market. That is, I wonder how many people actually listen to or view the addresses. A quick search of Obama’s speeches on YouTube shows that, in general, there are between 200,000 and 500,000 views for each speech (the notable exception being his inaugural address with around 4.5 million views). I wonder if the town hall could be a way for Obama or any future president’s addresses to be more interactive and to reach a wider audience. It might be a real logistical issue, but I could imagine a town hall meeting with millions of people. I could imagine the president delivering a short speech regarding an issue that has been selected for that town hall meeting, and then fielding questions, much like a press conference. While it seems that the town hall meetings with representatives and senators could sustain a much larger number of participants than was studied, but I wonder if it would be as effective if 1 million people participated. I think, however, the interactive nature of the style of meeting would still engage less politically active citizens, would make the general population feel closer to the president, and possibly would increase overall voter turnout at national elections. In addition, it might serve to bring the nation together on certain issues. For better or for worse, there was a trend for participants in the town hall meetings studied to align their views with their representative or senator’s. Perhaps the same might happen with the president, and might be a way to increase bipartisan collaboration or at least to increase tolerance and understanding of differing points of view. Overall, it could be a very positive change to make the president’s addresses to the nation interactive.