UNM Launches Experts Site for 2012 Election

UNM Uni­ver­sity Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Mar­ket­ing (UCAM) have devel­oped the “UNM Elec­tion Experts Site” to aid the media and the gen­eral pub­lic in being informed about the issues cen­tral to the 2012 pres­i­den­tial campaign.

While New Mex­ico isn’t con­sid­ered a “bat­tle­ground state” this year, many issues being debated in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign – from immi­gra­tion to health­care to eco­nomic recov­ery and more – are impor­tant to New Mex­i­cans. UNM fac­ulty experts explain and dis­cuss the issues with the media and the gen­eral pub­lic who are inter­ested in keep­ing up with the election.

The site elections.unm.edu, fea­tures video inter­view with sev­eral UNM pro­fes­sors shar­ing their par­tic­u­lar exper­tise regard­ing the issues that mat­ter to Amer­i­cans in 2012.

This is the sec­ond polit­i­cal sea­son for UCAM’s elec­tion site. UNM’s “Elec­tion ’08” site was well received by the media when inter­est from news sites around the world focused on New Mex­ico. The site also earned sec­ond place nation­ally in the 2009 National Press Women Competition.

“We started this site in 2008 as a way to show the media the vast exper­tise of UNM’s fac­ulty about issues impor­tant to that his­toric elec­tion,” said Ben­son Hen­drix, UNM pub­lic rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive. “This year we wanted to expand on that by pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion not only to the media, but also to the vot­ing pub­lic who would want to know more about this year’s issues.”

Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments since 2008 pro­vide the Elec­tion Experts team a vari­ety of ways to share UNM’s infor­ma­tion. In addi­tion to reg­u­lar video updates for the site, plans are in place to hold Google+ video hang­outs with UNM’s experts answer­ing ques­tions from the media.

The gen­eral pub­lic is also encour­aged to send in ques­tions for the fac­ulty. UCAM will select one or two ques­tions per week and iden­tify the appro­pri­ate fac­ulty to respond to them.

“We will locate the right experts who can answer a cou­ple of ques­tions a week,” Hen­drix said. He cau­tioned, how­ever, that pro­fes­sors may not be avail­able right away because of field research and the many demands on their time.

UCAM still seeks addi­tional pro­fes­sors and grad­u­ate stu­dents experts who are will­ing and inter­ested in speak­ing with the media and keep­ing their fel­low New Mex­i­cans informed about the impor­tant issues in 2012. Inter­ested fac­ulty and grad­u­ate stu­dents can email Ben­son Hen­drix.

Media Con­tact: Ben­son Hen­drix (505) 277‑5920; email: bhendrix@unm.edu