NORMAL, IL—Amidst an intense campaign for Illinois governor, Illinois State University hosted the first of two gubernatorial debates between Democratic incumbent J.B. Pritzker and his Republican challenger Darren Bailey. The University offered several methods for students to view the debate to promote student turnout to vote including a watch party and a raffle for tickets to view the debate in person.
1,200 audience members filled the Braden Auditorium on ISU’s campus eager to view the candidates in person. ISU freshman Braiden Gonzalez was among a handful of students who attended the debate in person. “It was an honor to see the candidates running for the highest office in Illinois butt heads,” Gonzalez says.
Before the debate, ISU president Terri Goss Kinzy made a statement regarding ISU’s commitment to Civic Engagement as a primary reason for hosting the debate. However, Gonzalez believes the audience did not seem representative of that.
Gonzalez said, “I think the students that actually got to attend, cared. But I don’t think the general population of the school cares much. I think if the school encouraged more students to go it would help students turn out to vote. There was an upper balcony in the auditorium that wasn’t used…they could have fit more [students] there.”
The university did offer another option for students to view the debate: a watch party. The party, hosted by the Office of the President, the Center for Civic Engagement, Forensics Union, Student Government Association, and the Department of Politics and Government was held in the Bone Student Center just a few steps away from the debate itself.
ISU student Emma Lancaster attended the watch party. “Unfortunately, there weren’t enough tickets to the actual debate, so the watch party was a nice alternative,” Lancaster says.
Lancaster, who also works for the Center for Civic Engagement believes the watch party was well planned and helped promote political engagement within the student community.
Lancaster says, “In the auditorium [the crowd] wasn’t allowed to give live reactions, but in the watch party we were allowed to do that…and we were all waiting for the hot topics the candidates would talk about.”
The watch party offered interactive activities for the viewers to participate with including a bingo game for players to fill out with different buzzwords the candidates would likely say. “People were pretty intense trying to win bingo…but [the watch party] definitely encouraged some dialogue about the election cycle,” Lancaster said.
Additionally, the watch party presented social media analytics from ISU’s Social Media Analytics Command Center (SMACC). Assistant Director of Convergent Media Dr. Nathan Carpenter provided the viewers with up-to-date analytics from social media centering around the candidates showing live trends of sentiment as the debate progressed.
Carpenter said, “We used the hashtag ‘#ilgovdebate’ and looked up anything peripherally related to the debate, key terms and hot topics using distinct tools we have in our lab and displayed those for students at the watch party.”
With the analytics provided from the SMACC, students could see how internet users were responding, reacting and engaging with the debate and the candidates themselves. Lancaster says, “[SMACC] had two big computer screens at the party…which showed how engagement with different hashtags [on Twitter] fluctuated throughout the debate.”
SMACC uses software to track trends happening in reaction to live events and can show sentiment users have regarding factors such as a response to a debate question. Carpenter believes the use of analytics is beneficial in promoting engagement, “[Analytics] gives students something to engage with…it gives them something to think about it contextualizes the moment and allows them to see what people outside of their sphere of influence are discussing.”
The debate was sponsored by ISU and AARP Illinois and was televised by Nexstar Media Group through Central Illinois’ WMBD-TV and was broadcasted on the radio via ISU’s NPR affiliates WGLT and WBCU.
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