Facebook's Health-Care Revolt: 'The Real Town Halls Are Social Networks'

by Jenny Hontz

"No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day."

Sound familiar? If you logged on to Facebook or Twitter yesterday, you probably read this multiple times. You may have even posted it yourself. The onslaught of pro-health-care messages coming out of social-media sites yesterday painted a very different picture from the faces we've seen at town halls and on the news. But does updating your status in favor of health care really make a difference?

As the saying goes, the medium is the message. While the origin of this grassroots effort is unclear, the speed with which it spread across social media seems to demonstrate an urgent push for health-care reform by the same crowd and in the same arena that helped elect President Obama last November. 

The language of the update is similar to a phrase that Obama uttered in his weekly radio address on Aug. 15: “No one in America should go broke just because they get sick.” A Democratic National Committee spokesman, however, said he had no idea where the meme began. Liberal activist group MoveOn.org adopted the status update, as did the actor Zach Braff, but not until it had already graced countless other Facebook profiles.

Despite Facebook's widespread appeal (it measured more than 80 million unique users last month), its user base still skews younger and hipper─at least compared with the angry seniors who have been facing off against health-care reform. For many, posting the status update was a small signifier of their frustration with the opposition and their support for what they see as an issue of vital importance.

"I like that it put a very personal spin on a political issue," says Charity Thompson, a 29-year-old, uninsured grad student at Portland State University in Oregon, who copied the status from a friend. "People could die, and they might have to make a choice between paying rent and medical bills."

After she adopted the status, 26 of her friends followed suit. "Many were people I did not necessarily think would agree," she says. "It led to some really amazing discussions on my friends' and relatives' pages. I felt like people were being really thoughtful and respectful. It makes me feel a little bit hopeful."   

There's good reason for that hope. While a cacophony of Facebook updates won't end all opposition to health-care reform, it does send a message.

“There is a quiet majority of folks who don't rant at staged events but think that health-care equity is an important national goal,” says Irving Group CEO Larry Irving, who created the term “digital divide” when he was assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information during the Clinton administration. “I posted 10 minutes ago, and 15 to 20 of my Facebook friends have reposted since then. That's a pretty powerful indication of quiet support, and it may turn into something more.”

But is anyone in power listening? The Facebook status update doesn’t make for exciting TV pictures, like angry protesters at town-hall meetings. In many instances, friends are merely talking to other friends who think like them. Many are asking whether it will have an effect.

“Of course it matters,” says social-media and politics expert Ravi Singh, CEO of ElectionMall Technologies, a nonpartisan company that helps campaigns harness Internet technology. He points out that politicians increasingly hire people not only to spread their messages through social media but also to monitor grassroots efforts like this one. “The real town halls are social networks,” he says. “The simple action of updating your status can make an impact.”   

The problem is one of metrics. There’s no way for politicians to measure precisely how many voters in their districts adopted the Facebook status update. That may be why some Facebook users mocked the status update with their own twist.

"If you agree, get off your ass and call/write your elected representatives and tell them so, because they are NOT reading your Facebook status,” one poster wrote Thursday.

However, it appears that at least some tech-savvy politicians are taking notice. Obama himself posted on his Facebook page late Thursday that he was “encouraged” to see the update “going around today.”
           
“Certainly when something spreads this quickly, it’s bound to reflect up,” says DNC press secretary Hari Sevugan, adding that the notion that the Facebook crowd doesn’t donate money and doesn’t vote was “disproved last fall—forcefully and unequivocally.”

Did you change your Facebook status? If so, why? 

For more on the health-care debate, check out our gallery of angry and perturbed people at town halls.