Speaker 1: Since the 2016 election, we've seen how social media has degraded our political system, from Russian bots to the president's midnight tweets. It's easy to see the harm it's doing. But have you also noticed that it's made our democracy more diverse and transparent? I've worked in government and campaigns for over a decade, and I have. I used to believe only a certain kind of person can run for office, that only one kind of experience mattered to voters. An Ivy League degree, lots of money, famous last name, being male. Basically the guys on Mount Rushmore. But that was before Facebook and Instagram and Twitter allowed politicians to speak directly to voters. Before that, they had to go through these traditional media gatekeepers, like 60 Minutes and Meet the Press and all the Sunday shows. And those were impossible to book unless you had connections. I grew up in New Hampshire, a state with outsized impact on national politics, because every four years it hosts the presidential primary. Which means if you had presidential ambitions, you probably came to my school or my neighborhood to make your case. I remember Bill Clinton's motorcade driving by my yard sale. And Bob Dole hanging out in the cafeteria, and Bill Bradley shooting hoops in the gym. And despite this front row seat to politics, it just never appealed to me. Of course part of that was my age, but the other part was that they seemed so scripted and unrelatable. That changed when I was about 19, after America declared war with Iraq. I woke up one morning in my college dorm, and someone had left the TV on, and this governor from Vermont was on Meet the Press, Howard Dean. And he said, Iraq hadn't attacked us on 9-11, our justification for war was wrong, and my generation was going to deal with the consequences of that conflict. I had never seen a politician speak so forcefully against the war. And for the first time in my young life, I wanted to be a part of a campaign. So I called this campaign every day for weeks, until finally they said, sure, you can knock on strangers' doors in the freezing cold for no money at all. And I was like, yes. I felt like I was part of a movement. And believe it or not, in 2004 I was. Howard Dean did something that no one had done. He raised low-dollar donations on the internet, which gave him the ability to run a national campaign as an outsider. But he still had to go through those traditional media gatekeepers. Social media wouldn't be what it is today for a very long time. Facebook wouldn't even be available to the public for two years. And the thing is, those traditional media gatekeepers, they weren't a big fan of Howard Dean's off-script speeches. Anyone in this room may remember his most infamous, after the Iowa caucus, it went a little something like this. We're going to South Carolina, we're going to Oregon, we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House, ha. Whew. Yeah. So that so-called Dean scream doomed his campaign. He was seen as unhinged and too angry. Right. As you sit here 14 years later, you may think, too angry? That's Tuesday. And you're right. Right now, our current president holds rallies almost every Tuesday where people scream in unison, lock her up. So how did we get here? Social media changed the game. It broke the way that politicians could communicate. No longer would canned talking points break through the clutter of Twitter. When I ran for state representative in my hometown 12 years ago, I doubted that voters wanted a woman who was working two waitressing jobs and had college loan debt to represent them. However, a waitress with college loan debt might be the kind of representative who understands why we need a living wage and student loan relief. But I didn't see my experience as an asset. And even if I had, I had no way of getting that message out. I misread my strengths as liabilities simply because I didn't look like those guys on Mount Rushmore or any other politician I'd seen. And maybe that's why I lost. Campaigns today are different. Candidates are using viral videos to tell their experiences with issues ranging from homelessness, teen pregnancy, debt, depression. Voters are seeing these stories and they're feeling galvanized by stories they relate to and they're giving money to help move those campaigns along. You know, there's long been a practice in politics called opposition research. It's where your opponent digs up all the dirt they can find on you. But in the age of social media, that could be useless because it turns out showing vulnerability is shrewd politics. Everyone likes a story and everyone has a story to tell. Today's candidates will not accept that their experience is disqualifying simply because no one like them has run before. Look at Stacey Abrams. She told me to be the first African-American governor of Georgia. Her opponent said, she's in debt. She's unqualified. She said, yeah, like millions of Americans, I have debt, but I won't feel ashamed that I needed a loan to get an education or to support myself. And with her response, she shut down that line of criticism and made herself more relatable. Look at Beto O'Rourke. He's documented almost every moment of his campaign on social media and it's introduced him to millions of Americans and helped him to raise an unprecedented $40 million in three months. Even if these campaigns are unsuccessful this time, they will have changed how campaigns communicate going forward, just as Howard Dean did with fundraising in 2004. But beyond campaigns, social media has made government more transparent. Who would have thought our 72-year-old president would get every member of Congress to use Twitter? But every time he tweets, the traditional media come asking for a response. So the need for conviction, authenticity, responsiveness, I know requirements of elected officials. Because if you don't respond, you're seen as totally out of touch. You're like, how does she know that? Well, I'm currently a communications director for a member of Congress, and you would not want to know how many times a week we get calls about presidential tweets. Around Memorial Day of this year, the hashtag, where are the children, went viral. The Trump administration had begun separating immigrant children from their families at the U.S. border. Our phones, our emails, our social media platforms were flooded by constituents who were outraged by this inhumanity. The congresswoman who I work for was also outraged. She and I flew to Brownsville, Texas, and saw the detention centers for ourselves. Along the way, we documented everything, videos, tweets. And in her capacity as an elected official, she was the eyes and ears of her constituents. And when she got back to D.C., she lended voice to their outrage by backing legislation to address this ongoing crisis. Social media has created a dialogue that's never existed between elected officials and those they represent. It's opened the door for people who thought they could never run, and it's served as a microphone for those who've never had one. Most importantly, it's changing the face of politics, maybe. Maybe it could even change those faces on Mount Rushmore. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.