I

Scripps Innovators Cup: Challenge 5

Engaging High School Students in Electoral Politics

Team: SMU Journalism Lab

Table of Contents


Value Proposition 1

Defining the Problem 1

How BallotBox.Me Can Help 1

Customer Segments 2

Competitors 3

Revenue Streams & Costs 3

Diversity Enhancement 4

SMU Journalism Lab Team Contact Information 5

Appendix I: App Prototypes 6

Appendix II: References 7


VALUE PROPOSITION
BallotBox.Me will demystify politics for high school students through its personalized
and interactive website and mobile app. The product will offer customized news and quizzes,
provided in part by vetted user-generated content, to make politics interesting and enjoyable
to a section of the population that is not currently active in the political scene. By providing
scholarship opportunities for students who actually participate in local and national politics
as verified through mobile geo-location technology, including beacons and social media
geofilters BallotBox.Me offers a substantial incentive for high school students to become
more politically active and engaged, ultimately by casting their vote at the ballot box in 2016.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Young people (18-29) make up 21 percent of the eligible voting population in the U.S.
However, while nearly 90 percent of voters over 65 have registered to vote, only 50 percent of
those ages 18 to 29 had registered as of 2012. This problem is even worse in Texas, with the
third lowest youth voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election at less than 30 percent,
according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Young people do not vote because they do not understand their stake in society, their
value or their potential as a voting population. We know this because we interviewed 19
students at Hillcrest High School in Dallas as part of our customer segment research for this
project.
To get people to vote in the 2016 election, specifically my age group, my initial idea
would be getting to the person and getting to one or two issues that really speaks to them
personally and that they find really important, Brian, a Hillcrest student, told us. And then
after I get them hooked, explain to them why all of the issues are important. And why its
important to vote, why elections matter, because elections have consequences.
But more than simply increasing their voter participation rate, high school students
need to learn how to become educated voters. This involves consuming news and participating
in politics. The policies that affect young people student loans, renting rights, gateways into
employment are all vital as these 18-year-olds enter the real world. Hillcrest High School
students mentioned they get news from Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, sources that
may not provide them the full education they need.
They need to find some way to make it entertaining or interestingsome sort of
interactivity or some sort of entertainment aspect of it, said Bray, another Hillcrest student.
A looser, less formal approach.

HOW BallotBox.Me CAN HELP
BallotBox.Me will transform the way high school students connect to politics through
its personalized and interactive website and mobile app. Users will have access to current,
political news articles, quizzes and photo stories, as well as access to high-quality, user-
generated content submitted by student contributors, creating a partnership that not only
gives more content to BallotBox.Me, but also acts as a desirable rsum builder to students.
After registering online and via mobile app, users will receive tailored content based on
their specific interests, be it education reform, human rights or the upcoming presidential
election.


BallotBox.Me will offer sponsored contests
throughout the year that enable users to win college
scholarships, tickets to concerts and movie premieres, and
access to private events, providing tangible incentives to
student users. Winners will be chosen based on a tiered point
system that awards varying levels of points for voting in
elections, registering to vote, creating content for
BallotBox.Me, sharing articles on social media, and attending
BallotBox.Me events. The greatest number of points will be
rewarded for registering to vote and voting, in order to
encourage users to become more active members of their
political community. These activities will be validated using
mobile beacons or Snapchat geo-filters to authenticate each
users location, and through online social media or in-app
submissions. By utilizing these innovative technologies,
already employed in many apps that teens use every day,
BallotBox.Me encourages students to easily integrate politics
into their daily lives.
A prototype of the BallotBox.Me
BallotBox.Me will bring politics to high school students
mobile app. See Appendix I for
more examples.
directly by partnering with local high schools, home-school
associations, National Honor Societies and Model United
Nations by offering access to materials and statistics that could benefit the classroom
setting. Student contributors will be found through this partnership by teacher
recommendations and will be vetted later by editors and reporters on staff. We also eventually
envision a political vocabulary database that will provide basic information about voting,
politics and media literacy in informal-style writing, as well as community rallies featuring a
mobile political traveling truck.
This is what makes BallotBox.Me stand out: its personal connection to its users. With
these elements, BallotBox.Me will demystify politics and make elections fun for high-school
students.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS
Of 46 million young people in the United States, less than 50 percent of this age bracket
shows up at the polls, meaning nearly 23 million millennials do not exercise their right to vote
during presidential elections.
According to our market research at Hillcrest High School in Dallas, the problem isnt an
overall lack of information about politics as a whole, but rather confusion over how to put that
knowledge into action. Some students admitted to not knowing how to vote or how to filter
through the political jargon to figure out what issues are actually at stake.
One student, Meredith, told us that her generation really did like to be involved in
reading political information, but that no news organization fit the tone for what her friends
like to read. High school students need specific content catered to not only their interests, but
also their mindset. They may need guidance in understanding the ins and outs of politics, but


their passion is there. This demographic needs a push a social media-savvy, simplified and, at
times, irreverent push in the right direction: towards the polls.

COMPETITORS
Our idea, BallotBox.Me is unique and does not have any direct competitors. The sites
that have perhaps the most similar idea are Turbovote.com and Rock the Vote. These sites
purpose is to encourage young people to sign up to vote. However, we believe our sites
purpose is more all encompassing, adding political education and scholarships to the push to
increase youth voting. We are also the only voting-focused site among this group that is
specifically targeted towards high school students.

Vox additionally provides political content to millennials but again, does not specifically
target its content to high school students or educate them on how to use their right to vote.
In terms of website names, Ballot-box.net is already an existing company. Our two
companies are not attempting to achieve the same outcome: Ballot-box.net is a site that helps
other websites set up polls as a decorative website option; whereas ours incorporates quizzes,
polls, and facts to engage students in politics. We have already purchased BallotBox.Me as a
domain name to prevent additional competition.

REVENUE STREAMS & COSTS
We can derive revenue from various sources. Our revenue source is our audience.
Teenagers, especially politically engaged teenagers, represent a relatively untapped and
extremely profitable market. Microsurvey monetization would be used to produce premium
datasets for advertisers or other interested parties. These datasets could be purchased la
carte or with a subscription. BallotBox.Me can also follow in the path of another political
startup, the Texas Tribune, in producing sponsored events.
The Texas Tribune Festival uses sponsorship and tickets to produce a yearly revenue
source of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although it is doubtful teenagers would pay for an
app, they may be much more likely to attend an event. While ticket prices would have to be
near zero, sponsored talks and events could cover the costs of the event and then some.
TribTalk, the opinion subsidiary of the Tribune, offers paid opinion spots on its page. Native
advertising, when done artfully, could help combine good journalism and sponsorship. These


pieces are clearly marked as a paid placement. BallotBox.Me could employ native advertising
of this style to create more revenue.
Once BallotBox.Me has had time to develop, we could work to build sponsorship and
monetize indirect audience access. This indirect audience contact, in addition to paid
programming and datasets, could help a large corporation, lobbyist group, or political party
reach a demographically desirable teenage audience with many different avenues. We are
following the lead of The Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego (whose corporate clients pay at
least $1,500 to share their civic initiatives through sponsored content) and other news
nonprofits who have proven that businesses are willing to sponsor political news websites and
events if a news organization can demonstrate that sponsors' messages will reach a politically
engaged audience. Until now, nobody has been able to assemble that audience at the high
school level but thats exactly what BallotBox.Me intends to do.
Initial costs for BallotBox.Me can waver greatly depending on outsourcing of work.
Outsourcing web and app development to an outside vendor would be a cheap option, with
initial app pricing of around $10,000 (per protected Lockton Research). Development costs
could be even lower if we enlist volunteer coders and developers from the Lyle Engineering
School. We could also recruit help in-house from Southern Methodist Universitys Meadows
School of the Arts, which has a Center of Creative Computation. Working together with these
two entities could significantly lower development costs.
Some costs for BallotBox.Me are fixed. Writers would need to be on staff to provide
content. Total cost for an editor and two reporters on staff would come in at around
$120,000/year. Secure server space would be essential, and is thankfully fairly cheap at around
$300/month.

DIVERSITY ENHANCEMENT
We believe that our solution will change the way youth perceive politics. Our hope is
that children will grow up interested in politics; therefore, by the time they are legal to vote,
they will register in a productive manner. Our program will be engaging and intriguing, just like
a game site, so students will be excited about learning. In a classroom, minors learn about the
history of how politics have unfolded; however, our website will keep them plugged in to
relevant politics so they are knowledgeable about what is important today.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention population estimates as of
July 1, 2013, there are roughly 54 million Hispanics living in the U.S, representing
approximately 17 percent of the U.S. total population, making people of Hispanic origin the
nation's largest ethnic or race minority. Texas has seen a large increase in its Hispanic
population. It has the second largest Hispanic population in the U.S. and 48 percent of all
Texans under 18 are Hispanic.
We will address the needs of this minority population specifically through technology
by providing a Spanish version of our content. Gabriel, another student we interviewed at
Hillcrest High School, expressed that he would be interested in receiving specific content about
immigration because he is a first-generation student whose family is originally from Mexico.
BallotBox.Me will enable users to receive content that is specific to their needs and interests,
like immigration reform and its consequences.




TEAM CONTACT INFORMATION
Jake Batsell
Adriana Fernandez Ibanez

Instructor
afernandezib@smu.edu
Emily Fann
jbatsell@smu.edu

efann@smu.edu
214-768-1915
Cody Beavers-Curtis


cbeaverscurt@smu.edu
Rebecca Keay
Meredith Carey

rkeay@smu.edu
mbcarey@smu.edu
Andrew Berry


arberry@smu.edu
Katelyn Hall
Christina Cox

khall@smu.edu
clcox@smu.edu
Gianni Windahl


gwindahl@smu.edu
Nikki Dabney
Lauren Castle

ndabney@smu.edu
lcastle@smu.edu
Gabriella Bradley


gjbradley@smu.edu


SMU Media Entrepreneurship course Twitter list:
https://twitter.com/jbatsell/lists/media-entrepreneurship/members


APPENIDIX I: APP PROTOTYPES
[Please see our website, BallotBox.Me, for larger versions of these wireframes.]

The Events page would allow

students to register for activities,
by submitting images verified by a
location beacon or through
Snapchats geo-filter component.

The Main Menu allows students to

pick from the personalized content
options.

Each students Profile would show

how many points the students had
gathered from participating in
Events to help apply for sponsored
scholarships.


APPENDIX II: REFERENCE LIST

In addition to the works cited below, four students from the SMU Journalism Lab team visited
Hillcrest High School on March 19, 2015, to conduct customer segment research in the form of on-
camera interviews with 19 students enrolled in Hillcrests AP Government class. Hillcrest is one of
the Dallas Independent School Districts most vibrant and diverse high schools -- its student body
is 56.6 percent Hispanic, 26.5 percent African American, 14.7 percent White, 1.8 percent
Asian/Pacific Islander and 0.4 percent Native American, according to The Texas Tribunes Public
Schools Explorer.

1. "CIRCLES MISSION." CIRCLE RSS. Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public
Service. Web. 26 Mar. 2015. <http://www.civicyouth.org/about-circle/>.
2. "Hispanic Or Latino Populations." U.S. Census. 3 Feb. 2015. Web.
<http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/hispanic.html>.
3. How Millennials Get News: Inside the habits of Americas first digital generation.
American Press Institute. 26 Mar. 2015.
<http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-
research/millennials-
news/?utm_source=API%27s+Need+to+Know+newsletter&utm_campaign=b6964ac00
4-
Need_to_Know_March_16_20153_16_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e3bf7
8af04-b6964ac004-45792665>
4. "Millennials in Adulthood." Pew Social Trends. 7 Mar. 2014. Web.
<http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/>.
5. How Nonprofit News Outlets Approach Native Advertising. News-Biz.org. 29 June
2014. Web. < http://news-biz.org/post/88677720443/how-nonprofit-news-outlets-
approach-native>