Mission Statement: A social networking app designed to put users in contact with local and state-wide political representatives. The goal of the site/app as a whole is to get people to interact with and be a part of the systems they are governed under. The point is to increase participation and interaction within our democracy and to make certain that the privilege of participating in government is accessible to more citizens.

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Aspect 1- User Organization/Structure: 

The user structure of TownHall will be organized much like classic social media sites with key exceptions. Users and Politicians will have two separate types of accounts, akin to “verified” celebrity accounts on Twitter and Facebook. News organizations will also have special types of accounts similar to politician accounts. Users can interact via direct messages, any open forums posted by news sites, politician accounts, or other civilian profiles, and during organized town hall live streams. The difference between the three types of accounts will be simple: civilian accounts will be basic and allow users access to all of the site and any politician and news profiles. Civilian accounts will not be able to live stream from their TownHall accounts, but can link their Facebook accounts to TownHall and stream from there. Politician accounts will be capable of hosting live streams and town halls available either to the public and/or their followers. News teams will be capable of live streaming coverage of events. There are no paid features to this site, only different types of verified accounts. Organizations and groups of civilian users will also be an option. Network administration will largely play a hands-off role depending on interactions between users, but will work to verify politician and news accounts and to deactivate any fake or double accounts that pop up. Since TownHall will be a site that links users together based on their voting demographic, they will be directly representing themselves in their community and hopefully unruly behavior online won’t be as terrible an issue. However, any obscene content will still be censored.

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Aspect 2- Core Interaction Feature:

Each politician registered on our app will have a personal page for themselves, including links to a variety of pieces of information about them. Their page will have sections for financial information(The dollar sign inside the box), including people who have donated to that politician as well as previous companies that they have worked for. All financial information will be taken from tax forms that were disclosed or from the politician’s team, and if the politician refuses to release the information then the page will display a message such as “[Politician] has refused to release their financial records.” and display an option for the user to post to the politician’s page asking about their financial disclosures. Their page will also have information about their stated viewpoints(The question mark inside the box) regarding current issues as well as voting records for how they have voted on bills and how those bills are related to issues. Connected politicians (such as people who have served in the same cabinet or who have worked together on bills) will all be able to be viewed through a connections page(Far right side of the screen). Below all of this information is where the social aspect of the app comes in, displaying any status updates written by the politician as well as any posts made about the politician, including events they have gone to(The events rectangle), statements they have made to press(News rectangle), and posts made about them from the public that have gained enough public support (A system of likes or upvotes will make sure no trolling posts make it to a politician’s page).

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Aspect 3- Second Core Interaction Feature:

This page lists all the events near the user. These will include elections, townhalls, community service events, rallies, fundraisers, debates, and any other type of event associated with local government. Above the list there will be a search bar where the user can look for events based on keywords or the name of the event. Next to the search bar there will be a “Refine Search” option. The users can use this to indicate that they are looking for events within a certain radius to them, or on/between certain dates. The refine search option will also allow the user to only look for events that will be live-streamed. The top of the list will include suggestions based what the user has indicated interest in (other events they’ve attended, people/pages they’ve favorited, etc.) While on the list page, basic info will come up under the name of the event, such as a date and time, the city in which the event will be held, and whether or not the event will be live-streamed. Each event will have a profile photo that will show up next to this information. This photo will be selected and uploaded by the host of the event. Under all the suggested events, there will be a section that lists all the other events happening in the user’s area, organized chronologically based on what is coming up the soonest. All the events, whether or not they were suggested based on the user’s interest, will appear the same way, the only difference between the 2 types of events being which list they are under. For each event, there