Collegiate Times

As the popularity of the social networking site Facebook continues to be on the upswing, members are gaining more and more features to personalize their profiles. A current addition is the ability to add political candidates and campaign issues that one supports.

Members can display candidates they support from all 50 states for positions in the Senate, House of Representatives and Governor. Several of these candidates have chosen to update their profiles on Facebook to talk about their campaign issues and why they would be the most viable choice.

?I feel like Facebook is a great way to show your political views,? said freshman engineering major Joe Sojka. ?Almost everyone has Facebook so anyone can see what I think about a candidate, and they may even decide to support that candidate after looking at their profile, or at least look into the election.?

Other students believe that Facebook is a good way for candidates to reach out into a different demographic than those who may be reached by events such as debates and advertisements. Campaign groups represent a variety of topics such as abortion, gay marriage, sex education and war.

?A lot of students are on Facebook, so the constant viewing of candidates names and the campaign issues hopefully leads them to look deeper into each issue,? said Rachel Witt, the historian for the College Republicans at Tech. ?Also, the partisan Facebook groups offer students contact information to those who have answers to any questions they may have.?

?Facebook campaign groups are extremely helpful by making students aware of candidates and issues,? said Chelsea Benincasa, a senior council for the Young Democrats at Virginia Tech. ?It's great how students can list the campaign issues they care about right on their profiles; this brings people together and helps grassroots activism like never before.?

Campus groups such as the Young Democrats are using Facebook and other means of electronic communication to reach out to students with similar views and to urge those students to get out to the polls.

?Students have a bad reputation when it comes to politics, and efforts like those of our club help students see that they aren't the only ones harboring liberal ideas, or even that they are in a small minority, and that really helps voter literacy,? said Erik Benoist, Vice President of Young Democrats. ?We can use Facebook to target potential voters and help them remember to get absentee ballots in on time, to help organize Get Out The Vote efforts or even to get them connected with other organizations so they can help donate their time and effort to the political process.?

Many hope that having election issues on Facebook will inspire the student demographic to become more knowledge about issue and campaigns in general and encourage them to make more informed voting decisions.