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In an age where more than eight in 10 Americans consume news through digital devices, it’s no wonder that nearly every local politician has a presence on multiple social media platforms to connect with constituents.
From Facebook pages to Twitter polls to YouTube live streams, local representatives have carved out a niche on nearly every major platform out there. But what if all that information — and more — was in one place on an app dedicated to local politics?
This is the question that Stanford University MBA student Will Scott and recent graduate Anthony Spaelti sought to answer when they created CivicBell, a new media platform that launched as a pilot for Mountain View residents on Oct. 10.
Here’s how it works: Based on your location, the platform automatically creates a feed from the officials who represent you, from the smallest local boards all the way up to the state level.
This “CivicFeed” is where elected officials and jurisdictions can post about upcoming meetings, ask residents to answer a survey or alert constituents to the latest policy proposals. It’s also where their constituents – and only their constituents – can interact with posts by liking, commenting or answering surveys.
“The engagement is really meant to be limited to the district that is pertinent. So for a school district, it’s everyone within that school district. For a city, it’s everyone within that city’s limits,” said co-founder Scott, “as opposed to someone from Texas commenting and getting into a banter with someone from California on California politics.”
Everyone’s identity is verified through ID.me, a website that securely ensures users are who they say they are.
“Elected officials, appointed officials, government agencies, the whole government that serves you as a resident – it takes hours to figure out who they are, how they communicate, what they’re working on, and then hours more if you actually want to share some of your opinions,” Scott said. “There’s no reason that our current capabilities with technology shouldn’t allow us to make that connection more productive and easier.”
While the CivicFeed is reserved for local officials to post, CivicMotions allow residents to speak out about what’s on their political minds.
“Let’s say, for instance, that I’m a dog owner and I get annoyed that all the parks don’t allow dogs,” Scott said. “I start a CivicMotion, I have to get 10 to 20 people to sign it before it gets populated on everyone’s feed. Once that happens, everyone that’s eligible to sign it – people that are in the district that it’s pertinent to – it’s going to populate on their CivicMotion list, and then they can sign it there.”
Other tabs on the CivicBell platform include Local News which automatically populates with recent headlines from local and statewide news organizations. The Events tab allows people to RSVP to and create new events. And the CivicMap allows you to see who your elected officials are in any given location. For now, the pilot is aimed at Mountain View constituents specifically.
“We’ve talked to, by now, over 100 elected and public officials,” said co-founder Spaelti. “We got a good response of elected officials that serve the Mountain View area, from state representatives all the way to the local level. We were like, ‘OK, this seems to be an exciting community that’s willing to try out new things.’”
Another feature that distinguishes CivicBell from other social media platforms is the demographic analytics it will offer government officials.
“We have basically mapped California down to a housing block, based on the most recent census and voter registration data, hoping to create more equitable access to political challenges,” Spaelti said. “If somebody puts out a survey on Facebook, you don’t know who actually answers that survey. With the data we have, we can actually tell the government accounts that you have reached only certain parts of your demographics.”
That data is shared “fully anonymized,” Spaelti added.
“As opposed to Facebook and Twitter, we don’t run targeted ads on our CivicFeed, because we don’t collect personal identifiable information to monetize for the sole purposes of targeted ads,” he said. “It can’t be that, in 2022, you can’t engage with your government without giving up part of your privacy.”
After testing out the product in Mountain View, Scott and Spaelti hope to scale it to a wider audience.
“Ideally that’s first to the county level in Santa Clara County, and then county by county throughout the state,” Scott said. “Our ultimate dream is that this thing expands to other states: the kind of thing where if you move, all you do is change your address and all of a sudden your whole funnel of government shifts over to what’s pertinent.”
Those interested in trying out the new platform can head to CivicBell.com or download the app to make an account and get connected with Mountain View politics.
While this is an idea that could be somewhat useful, as far as I can tell, it omits the ability to provide any significant nuance or discussion on a given matter. So much of substance happens through discussion and deliberation, not through clicking buttons.
How many people want to sign up to actually receive more spam?
Out of curiosity I registered. Not much to see but to participate even in a mundate survey (e.g. Do you know you can get a Covid Booster here?) you need to verify your identity with ID.me. A very intrusive process where one has to share date of birth, phone number and even upload Identification documents. No thanks.
@bkengland Absolutely! With CivicBell we hope to promote productive discussion and discourse, which is why all of our posts can involve comment boards where real residents can deliberate, ask questions and discuss opinions and facts. This unstructured input is complemented with surveys for general sentiment analysis for structured input – basically up to the official how best to garner sentiment depending on the topic. We believe both have a use case.
@Bernie Brightman Very good point. No one does! We definitely don’t. With CivicBell we hope to avoid the need of signing up for 50+ newsletters since it’s all there in one feed for you to read whenever YOU want!
@SRB Appreciate sharing your initial thoughts. Keep in mind this is the pilot launch so engagement will continue to increase and improve. It is up to the government officials what information they would like to distribute and what surveys/discussions are most helpful for them to do their job. Post-election season we expect much more productive engagement options to be available. Thank you for bearing with us as we work out the kinks. As for ID.me, the reasons we use them is (1) they are trusted by multiple government entities, (2) as CivicBell, we do not have access to any of these identification documents and (3) a large portion of Californians already have accounts.