three. >> in two gays, gavel to -- days, gavel to gavel coverage begins on the conventions. live on c-span. next, the communicator with facebook staffers and strategists who advise political campaigns, followed by past republican convention speeches, first, ronald reagan in 1980 in detroit, michigan, dwight eisenhower in 1956 in san francisco, california. >> well, this week on the communicator, we want to look at the issue of political communications, especially social media. joining us this week are two employees of facebook, katie har barth and adam conner. adam, what do you do at facebook? >> i help run the government and politics, division, along with katie here and our object is to evangelize facebook among the key

constituencies, government officials on the agency side but also elected officials, members of congress, governors, state legislators, but also, political candidates and third party groups, so the obama campaign, the romney campaign, the political committees, and also, some of the prominent groups you're hearing about in this election, whether they're the superpacs or the move-ons of the world, and facebook is a pretty unique thing. it's not something that just exists at facebook.com, it's on mobile devices, applications and all sorts of things, so our job is to help folks in washington and the political world navigate that and understand how to best utilize this technology, to win elections, to communicate with constituents and voters host: you are thedalic half. guest: i am. host: that means katie is the republican half? but -- so do you do your job differently? guest: it's funny. when i first started at facebook five years ago, i opened an office out of washington in my apartment and i serviced everybody, actually, in the world.

in 201, we brought katie in to help divide it up more. so we don't do our job differently. our goal is the same. we want the political candidates, elected officials, to use this technology in order to better communicate with constituents and voters, but the nice thing now, instead of covering the whole world, i cover half of it. host: katie harbath, what is your job as republican on the facebook policy team? host: -- guest: it's a lot of things that adam mentioned, whether working with the romney campaign, senate candidates, even as far down as mayoral candidates but we share responsibilities as well, what facebook is doing as a whole around politics and the election, so in january, we did a debate around the republican presidential primary and we both worked very closely on that and then the conventions are coming up, and so i'm focused on a lot of what we're doing at the republican convention and adam will be working on charlotte. host: katie har barth, during

the republican primary, did rick perry, michele bachmann, tim pawlenty, mitt romney, did they work with you directly, did their campaigns work with you, and how so. >> guest: they did and the individual vendors they hired. tim pawlenty announced his exploratory on facebook. i can't believe it was in march 2011, it was a long time ago, but we worked closely with each one of the campaigns because they knew it was very important to be on facebook. we have more users than who voted in the 2008 election, and facebook is a great way for them to bypass the traditional media filter and be able to talk directly to voters, and it was quite a while, the primary season, as you remember, where there are a lot of people up and down, and a lot of them were really using facebook and looking to us to brainstorm and really partnership with about the different ideas and ways they might use their facebook

presences. host: adam kenner, who's your connection with the obama campaign? guest: i play a similar role as katie did, and i only had to deal with one, where she was dealing with 15, 20, whatever, and we have a close relationship with the obama campaign, a working relationship. i worked with him in 2008 when i was the only one here and continue to work with them and it's a similar role to what katie plays, how to use this technology. on the day the obama campaign announced the reelection effort, the 2012 effort officially, it started with an e-mail, they sent people to their website which had a facebook application and youtube video and the facebook application allowed them to tell friends they're in, i'm in application and they were in to support the presidential election effort. from day one it's been a social campaign. guest: and adam and i are part of a much broader team. in 2011 we started to grow our team because there are a lot of different aspects of

facebook that people work on, whether it's the facebook pages, advertising, building on our platform with applications. so we're actually, we're really lucky and really blessed to have a larger team helping us out both here in washington, d.c., or our office in austin, as well as beck park. host: why austin? guest: it's a great town and as we look to expand our coverage around the world and country, it's great to have a central time zone. guest: now that there's a presumptive republican nominee, how do you work with the romney campaign, how has your job changed? guest: i have a colleague that helps out a lot and she really works with him on a day-to-day basis. a lot of the advertising strategy, they've been having a lot of success around the new ability to have ads appear to people and they see it on their mobile devices, and so there's a very close partnership there, as well as

they have an application late last week that we work with them on and we go to boston regularly to talk with their developers, hear what they're working on, and be able to help them with best practices that we've seen. not only in politics, but in other verticals, naming -- gaming or retail that they might be able to apply. host: you both mentioned mobile. is that just where everything is? guest: it's not where everything is but it's really where i think a lot of increasing emphasis and attention is being put. the thing that both katie and i will tell you is these devices are only going to get more powerful and connected and more people are going to have them and inherently, by the very nature of it, voters are mobile. when you have to polling loca,so understanding he someone be able to harness that in the moment and not just when they're sitting in front of a computer, and something that both campaigns and groups are spending a lot of time thinking about how do we maximize that. host: one of the unique things about facebook is your

office space here in d.c. it's not a usual office here in d.c. we're going to show our viewers that right now. plus the fact that you two sit next to each other, correct? guest: yeah, we sit across from each other, back to back to one another. everybody at face pwaorbgs no one has an office, whether you're mark zuckerberg or cheryl simberg or adam conner and i, it's an open environment. we sit in rows of tables. what's great about that is the collaboration that it brings. one of the things i love about our company is that they really encourage ideas from all over the company, and it can really spark from the bottom up. if you've got an idea to really just be able to talk to the people around you very quickly, to get something done. i always liken it to it's very much like a campaign. campaigns are loud, everyone together, just trying to get everything done, and that's exactly what our office is like. host: but you being the republican and you being the

democrat, you don't necessarily want to share information do you? guest: we have conferences and things, we'll take private and presidential calls on, something of that nature. a lot of it is we're colleagues, coworkers and friends and it's great to have a collaborative environment when watching news, talking about what's happening, but we obviously, the nice thing about this structure is we're able to keep things that people would prefer to talk to katie about on her side of the fence or the wall and people that prefer to talk to me on my side. host: what are some of the typical requests that you get from candidates? you don't have to name names or anything. but if you'd each come up with an example or two from your side, what are some of the typical requests. guest: there's a lot of just kind of basic issues. our platform is changing a lot, so we'll get questions of how they mitoo the best way to post a photo or the best time to try to get the best an gaugement, asking us to take a look at their insights and give them some suggestions based on familiarity of looking at a lot of these pages and what they're doing.

or their requests can extend to we did our first congressional hack-a-thon working with house republican leadership, on with hoyer's office, and they asked us for requesteds and wanted our help to help pull it off and it was a great event with over 200 members of congress, developers, staffers, all inside the capitol, doing a hack-a-thon, looking at how can facebook be used to help better constituents' engagement with their own members and how bills become law. guest: a lot of what we're having discussion about today, campaigns are not static industries, you may spend a couple of months building up name identification, grass root supporters, and we're turning the corner into that final stretch of the last two months of the election, so that's how do we take these strategies we've been using to gather supporters and not turn them -- and now turn them into volunteers, voters,

how do we do persuasion and get the vote. a lot of that is looking at the election in november and saying what do we do to make sure our strategies are aligned, emphasizing things and trying new things. a lot of that is understanding how the environment works and shifting and saying you've been focused on fundraising, because it's -- now it's time to push tv ads, getting the volunteers and telling their friends they're doing it so they can get involved as well. it's a lot of turning on this machine they've built. host: quickly, what's your political background? >> guest: i was campaign staffer, and on capitol hill on the hues rules committee. host: on the democrat side. and katie. >> guest: nine years ago, i started with the republican national committee during president bush's reelection effort, also worked at rudy giuliani's campaign back in 2007 and at the national republican cycle.

host: do you get requests from local officials for help? guest: it is part of our job and we get requests from local officials. work closely with the mayors' conference and i was down at the conference in orlando earlier this year to walk them through how they might be able to -- >> host: of it a popular seminar? guest: it was a popular seminar. very popular. a lot of focus is on the presidential campaigns, as it should be, but one of the great powers of facebook is that it's free. and having a page and gauging the future is free, and even our advertising, you know, for anybody to get started, you can have a very low budget, 50 or $100 a day, and so local candidates are finding that it can be a great tool to cut through the clutter and really have an advantage over their opponent. host: well, we, when we knew you two were being on the communicators we sent out requests to our viewers in case they have any questions and we got many.

i want to read just a couple. this is from chris and chris says more people are talking about mitt romney on facebook than barack obama. meanwhile, obama has more facebook likes than romney. what does this indicate? guest: a lot of it is the engagement, that people are -- how many people are engaging with mitt romney on his facebook page. people can like your page, but that's just the first step. then it's really up to the page ad links, or the campaign link in this instance of engaging fans and promoting their content and getting their fans to share it, and so that people talking about number is an indicator of people engaging with mitt romney's page and they don't necessarily have to be his fans. if i share content off of his page and then a friend of mine sees it and shares it or comments on it, even if they are a -- aren't a fan of his page, it still gets counted in that number, so it's a great snapshot over the past week of how much people have been engaging with that

candidate on their page. host: but mitt romney has 4 million so far whereas barack obama has 27 million. do you feel less than? guest: no, i don't, because i really look at, for me -- the fan count is important but again, it's that engagement number and the engagement number is the people who in the last seven days have seen that content and somehow engaged with that page, and so that's a much more real-time indicator of what's happening on facebook, because remember, both of these candidates have had their facebook pages since 2007, 2008, and so they've been building these fans up for quite a few years, so that's a much longer snapshot of people that like their pages, versus the people talking about, which is how many have engaged in the last week. host: adam conner. guest guest i think it's interesting, exactly what katie said. i don't think we should be surprised that mr. obama has more fans. he has had it since 2008 and then president, so it's

natural that he would have the advantage there. romney on his main page, and i think the obama campaign has done well, they've taken this to a more local level, so there are more than 50 pages for each of the states so whichever state you're in there's an obama page for that state, there are pages for the constituency groups, whether it's veterans or women for obama. it's what they called the trip team, the rapid response teal and put lovers for obama, which is also very popular. so a lot of activities not solely concentrated on the obama page. a lot of that is more localize dollars action and i think that's important because while the message is to campaign -- the campaign specifics are important and the main page, they're key, but if you're in colorado or an activist and new hampshire, that information and connecting with those voters is going to be more valuable than someone who connects with the main page because they can say great, you're in new hampshire, let's go to the manchester office and volunteer and tell your friends. host: adam conner, if you

wanted to get ahold of those 27 million people or if the campaign did, would you send the same message to all 27 million? or do you microtarget? guest: we see both. i think there are things that are consistent throughout the campaign that are going to be leveled, no matter what, so obviously, for instance, one will see his convention speech, that is something that is blasted to everyone, but usually some of our features of the campaign is also able to target other groups, geographically and by other characteristics with more specialized messaging, whether on the free side or paid side and we think that is the embodiment of what has been happening in the offlying campaign for many years. obviously not all voters receive his direct mail, television ads vary from market to market. it's a natural extension of some of the things we've been so seeing in campaigns for many years is which is -- which is how do you effectively target the voters you hope will vote for you. guest: i would agree with adam and say that the campaigns we've been seeing,

both at the presidential level, are ones who integrate the posting strategy with the offline strategy, so you're seeing a lot of campaigns posting images of people volunteering and providing a link for people to sign up and volunteer themselves and when they're doing those events those are much more better when you're localizing them because you don't want someone in california getting an event in wisconsin let's say, but like adam said, there's also the broader messaging that will go out to everyone. host: so how would you as a consultant at facebook -- is that a fair word to use? guest: yes. host: how would you take my personal information? i signed up and i've hiked both barack obama and mitt romney. and so i don't know what that will do to any ads or whatever i get, but how would you take my personal information, gender, age, proximate age, employment, et cetera, and use that to target an ad?

guest: so first, one makes very, very clear that when you like a page the advent of that page, the campaigns, they're getting no personally identifiable information about you, so they don't know -- all they know is perhaps what city you're in but they don't know that it's tied to you so an aggregate on the inside still knows they have 20,000 people from washington, d.c. who are fans, they will know they have 25 percent are males between the ages of 25-34. so that way they can get a sense of the demographics of this, but they don't know specifics about individuals. we're very, very clear, very protective of the user's information and want to make sure a user is given explicit permission if they're ever doing anything with the campaign. guest: and i think beyond that, campaigns n. the same way they don't have access to personal identifiable

information when you like your page, when they target advertising they're not targeting individuals in a sense. they are tools able to target aggregate groups, for instance, so if you'd like to run an ad to males in washington, d.c. between a certain age range, there are 2000 that you could show the ad to. so they have granularity and control but allows users to ensure their privacy. host: do local campaigns, presidential campaigns and congressional campaigns use your services differently? guest: absolutely. i think -- well, i'd say -- one, the nice thing is about campaign, whether it's a school board or the president, they have the same goal, tad like -- they'd like to win on election day and get more votes than the opponents. then it becomes a resource question, where the campaign may have 70 or 85 percent of what they'd like to do online, a congressional candidate, they have significantly fewer resources, and so i think for

many, it becomes how do you use these resources most effectively. so i think what we see a lot of is folks who may be doing it themselves, for instance. they've got facebook on their iphone or and droid phone and -- or android phone, taking pictures, letting people where he's going. we see that engagement all over the place. at local events, the fascinating phenomenon is local candidates who think that paying for a website, maintaining a website, that's a lot of work. they can do it on facebook now and that's a fundamental shift from where we were two, three years ago. host: katie har barth, as a veteran of the republican national committee, how has facebook changed campaigns over this last nine, 10 years. guest: when i was at the rnc, facebook just started, it wasn't a year old when the campaign started. host: did you nok us -- focus at all? guest: mark started facebook

in a dorm room in 2004 and the election was in 2004. there wasn't youtube. we were uploading them, you had to have a windows version, a real time version, and i wish if we had had these tools in 2004, it would have been awesome and you fast forward to eight years later and the rnc has a social victory center, a volunteer center, purely on facebook. so people from all over the country, to be able to make phone calls in support of republican candidates. guest: wi say it's not just campaigns that have been changing. if you look at the media, the distribution platforms that allows folks like c-span to push that content out, to share what they're doing, we see media organizations completely embrace facebook and understand how valuable distribution mechanism it is. we just actually announced something that will be launching today, which is an application we built with cnn called the i am voting

application which will allow you to engage in a lead-up to the presidential election both with their friends and with cnn as well, and so you see that. we have a great resource, for instance, that we as a company can now highlight, use their own tools, and we have u.s. politics on facebook and every day we update that with what we're seeing on facebook and politics at facebook.com/u.s. politics. we have a great shift. i think voters have been affected, media, campaigns, it's not just one sector. all the things are playing. host: katie harbath, you built on the i am voting. what is that and what does it indicate? guest: anyone is going to be able to use it. we built in a partnership with cnn and tenth wave, and people are going to be able to go there and declare their intention that they're going to vote, share that with friends and be able to see their friends who are also going to vote as well, because we really see the power of friends. we signed up facebook -- we

find that facebook users are 50 percent more likely to persuade friends to vote, so now in an election that can be a few hundred votes, that can become very powerful. in using the app people will not only be able to say they're voting but share what issues matter to them and where they land on those issues and how that compares not only to their friends but other people in their state or other people here in the united states. host: do you see a time ever when there's just going to be virtual campaigning? you were talking about the social victory center where people in new york are encouraged nevadans to vote, et cetera. guest guest i think what i love about american democracy, it's rooted in the physical agent, whether it's pulling a lever or mailing an envelope, voting is at its core a physical act and the act candidly of getting people to vote has been really in the last four years, eight years, a mesh of online, off line, how do we use technology to allow people to get out, and allow people in new mexico to go door to door and talk to

friends. so i think you'll never remove the physical asinspect but technology can enhance it and they can help people who aren't physically somewhere participate. tip o'neill used to say all politics is local and katie and i like to say all politics is now social, because for the first time if you look at the evolution of american politician, you had door to door campaigning and you had to do it on a small scale because there's a limit on how many doors you can knock and then television allowed you to have the broadcast range but it was one way, you couldn't respond back, and for the first time with necktology -- technologies like facebook we're now able to have that human to human interaction at a scale of a broadcast model. we think that's fundamentally going to alter the way we look at politics and are able to participate in it. guest: i always say that facebook is for after the hand shake. scott brown in 2010, here was a race that people thought no republican would win. for a republican to win a seat in massachusetts, let alone a kennedy seat, and he really did the work and used facebook early on to be getting his message out,

building up supporters, but he was also doing the hard work of going to fenway park and shaking peoples' hands, and what people could do is after meeting him in person, then fan him on facebook and stay in touch with him and stay in touch with the campaign and not have to wait for that television commercial to come up or a direct mail piece to come by. host: just to give in another viewer comment, a question, this is from linda and linda says obama has a lot more on facebook. how much influence do you continuing has on vote or is it just preaching to the choir? guest: so i would say what is so powerful is not just look the a the total number of likes he has but what we think is a hugely important number, how many people those fans are connected to through their friends, so that 1 degree of separation, what we call the friend of fan, and through that, obama is connected to nearly everybody in the united states, through a friend of a friend. so you have the ability there that everybody can hear not

just from barack obama but hear from friends about barack obama and we know from many years of science n. general, friends are the most influential things in decision making whether it's buying a car, going to movies, and that's how it affects your vote. so part of that is not just a number and the people supporting him but being able to turn those people and have them talk to their friends and have them influence their friends, the messenger is my friend katie or is my friend jeremy, it's not necessarily the candidate themselves and that's very powerful. host: katie har barth. guest: i agree. there's an element of getting out the vote and making sure the people who are supporters are going to get out the vote and volunteer but like adam said, a lot of people have friends who might still be on the fence and might still be undecided. and so if they can be sharing information and helping to persuade those friends, we often times say we're running away from the power of crowds, having a generality

of what's popular through the power of friends, because whether it's who you're voting for or what car you want to buy next you're probably going to put more weight if a friend recommends to you than if you're just getting it off a general report or what the general public seems to like. host: if people want to see your work on facebook, can they? can they actually see your work? do you do any writing, do you do any promoting? guest: we have a great page, facebook.com/u.s. politics where we put up great examples of what candidates of all stripes and levels are doing, as well as us providing tips and tricks. we had a post-up around the conventions with a checklist for any elected officials or campaigns that will be in tampa or charlotte about how they can stay connected down there. guest: this is an example of something we think, the conventions themselves, an we've been working with both, to make them social and how to broadcast online, but each of the delegates, let's say there's 4000 delegates, each

has a facebook user, on average, 150 friends, cut thank to a broadcaster to send that experience back to their friends, that's a huge potential crowd of flusters that the obama and romney campaigns can use. we're looking forward to what we truly hope will be a social convention. host: adam conner, when you get a call from a first-time candidate or something, what do you warn him or her about? in the use of facebook. guest: you know, i say generally two things. the first is never have a facebook page -- i've known many politicians and the first office they run for is not necessarily last one and you always want to be katie harbath, the governor, or president of the united states so keep an open mind to their future. second is facebook itself is not the only way you kphaoeupb indicate. facebook should be integrated into everything you do. the field team, your finance team. your communications team. all of them need to be thinking about how they can take advantage of this technology to better do their

jobs to get you elected. so the internet is not something that can be put on one person and say katie, you're the internet person, you'll do only the internet. let's a bad recipe for campaigns. it's something that has to be underfood from the candidate down and utilized at every level. host: what's the mistake you've seen a candidate make on facebook? guest: i think putting not a lot of time into it and posting press releases and using it purely as a broadcast medium and not really playing to the strengths of facebook and using it to engage with their supporters. host: well, unfortunately, we are out of time. i hope we can check in with both of you later on during the campaign. the conventions are about to start. and you can find face books' politics page at -- >> guest: facebook.com/u.s. politics. host and c-span will cover the conventions gavel to

gavel and c-span.org is where you can find a lot of resources. adam conner, katie har barth, thank you for being with us. guest: thank you. >> tomorrow, 2012 republican presidential candidate ron paul will hold a we are the future rally. our live coverage begins at noon eastern on c-span.org and 3:00 p.m. on c spafplt, after that event we'll have republican national convention chairman reince preibus. we'll have the convention schedule, a view from the floor of the convention hall and more. join us live at 5:00 eastern, here on c-span. >> what i like watching on c-span is the live coverage of the debate going on the floor, you know, when i'm flipping through the major news channels, i tend to -- it tends to be lot of talking