Open Interviews using Facebook Q& A for Elections Candidates in Buenos Aires

The main goal LA NACION had behind the coverage of the primary election in Ciudad de Buenos Aires, was to focus on giving a service to the audience and to bring together the voters and the politicians. With this in mind, the social media area was asked to think of a tool to help accomplish this goal.

Immediately we thought about the Q&A platform Facebook have recently made available. The huge amount of Facebook users in Argentina, the affinity politicians have with it were some of the excuses we needed to try it out.

The Q&A is a platform in which a celebrity or politician recieve questions from the audience, and answers them in real time. The hosts, in this case LA NACION, establishes a duration of this action (in our case was 30 minutes per interviewee), and make a Facebook post in its fan page. There, the guest can choose which question to answer.

The only intervention we had as hosts of the activity, other than lending its fan page to the interviewee, was to moderate the comments of the users, in order to avoid insults or verbal attacks to the politician.

Up to that date, the only registered Q&A in Argentina was the one Ernesto Sanz (presidencial candidate), and well known politician, have done a couple of weeks before ours. Other than that, we had only Dilma Rousseff´s experience and the one’s we were able to read that happened in the U.S. That’s why be asked for some help to the local office of Facebook. They gave us some support and insights about how the tool works and how to make the most of it.

After testing the tool with one of our technology editors, we launched the proposal to the main candidates to Governor of the City of Buenos Aires.

The challenges we could find were:

to compromise candidates with the action
to make it atractive for the audience to engage in talking directly to the candidates
to produce original content to both platforms digital and print , as a result of these experiences

For our surprise all the candidates were interested in participating . All of them knew or learned to use the platform and dedicated the time assigned for this action.

The audience was engaged as well . We had to filter those participants with bad intentions but these were just a couple of cases.

We could produce original content thanks to the candidates, which were very open in answering the user´s variety of questions. For all the interviews we could write articles for Lanacion.com and print edition as well.

Q&A’s Examples

Anibal Ibarra Candidate

Video: https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/videos/10152869993349220/

Q&A: https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/posts/10152870008844220

Promo: https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/photos/a.10150092000724220.273081.71339054219/10152869119869220/?type=1&permPage=1

Article: http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1786415-anibal-ibarra-hay-gente-que-no-quiere-que-me-postule-y-otra-que-si-decide-el-voto

Augusto Rodríguez Larreta Candidate (He was the winner in the Primary)

Video: https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/videos/10152836022259220/

Q&A https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/posts/10152836152339220

Promo: https://www.facebook.com/lanacion/photos/a.10150092000724220.273081.71339054219/10152835634739220/?type=1&permPage=1

Article: http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1782365-rodriguez-larreta-respondio-en-vivo-las-inquietudes-de-los-ciudadanos

Gabriela Michetti Candidate