Mixing Politics With Facebook

As we approach another Election Day, more and more of the postings we see on Facebook have a political dimension.

 How do you maintain your online relationships with people with different opinions than your own? It is best to think about this issue before it gets heated so that you can react with thoughtfulness and not blind emotion.

We all use Facebook for different reasons, but for most of us it is a way to keep up with former classmates, coworkers and family. We can see and share good news, photos and interesting stories. You can scroll through updates and click through to photo albums or shared links and it generally does a good job of keeping us up to date with more people than we could before Facebook existed.

 But Facebook isn't the same as in-person interaction. People post things that they might not say in person to each and every friend, but it goes out to everyone. Whether sharing a rant from the news media, or expressing a controversial opinion, it is easy to ignore nuance when it is just you and your computer screen. As we enter another cycle of highly charged political opinions, it becomes more and more likely that feelings will be hurt, friends will be offended and you will have to decide if your Facebook friendship can survive these differences.

 Facebook has tools that allow us to choose which people see the updates, using the “Lists” function. You can choose to form different lists of people that will receive updates from you and you can manage the types of updates you share with each list. If you know that your family wants to see every baby photo, but your book club might not want to, you can manage the lists to show photos only to family members. You can hide your game updates or music suggestions. On the receiving end, you can block different types of updates by hovering  over the top right of an update and hiding certain ones (either by friend or type of updates).

No matter how careful you are, you will see an update now and then that will rankle you. Do you choose to respond and engage in an online tiff? Do you unfriend someone who has different beliefs than you do?

Keep how you feel in mind when you post on Facebook because you may have forgotten that some of your friends have very different views. So think before you post, think before you respond and remember that not all Facebook friendships can survive when political talk gets heated.