Overview
Online Town Hall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century is a report summarizing the findings and recommendations from an academic study of 21 online town hall meetings between Members of Congress and their constituents which were facilitated by the partners of the Connecting to Congress project. The report is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and contributions from Harvard’s Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
The report includes information and analysis on:
- The impact participation in the meetings had on constituents’ views of their Members of Congress and on their participation in political activities, such as talking about politics and the Member and voting;
- How to conduct effective online town hall meetings;
- How the demographics of people attracted to the online town halls differed from those attracted by traditional means of political participation; and
- Details of how we conducted our rigorous study.
Additional Information
Download the handouts from the briefing: 
othm-briefing-handouts (1.1 MB)
Download the entire report: Online-Town-Hall-Meetings (1.0 MB)
39 pages
Copyright 2009 by the Congressional Management Foundation
ISBN: 1-930473-12-5
