Gadget Insights: As Assembly Elections are bound to take place in five of India’s states, Twitter on Monday has announced a series of initiatives that it says focuses on encouraging informed healthy conversations and to battle political misinformation from taking place. It focuses on a number of initiatives to conduct information on elections smoothly.
It includes a feature like a search prompt with Election Commission of India and respective state election committees for legitimate information regarding contesting candidates of political parties, polling booth’s locations, dates of election in states and its constituencies and mostly election related information.
Another initiative is a custom emoji to encourage participation to stimulate participation in election-related discussions and is available now until May 10th. Next is a series of catchy decodes or de-bunks to tackle election-related myths on Twitter and will soon appear on people’s home timelines and in Search, including information about how to register to vote and details on EVMs and VVPATs. The service will also focus on de-bunking critical issues as they arise with a curated Twitter Moment.
Another initiative is a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for upcoming assembly elections in 2021.
Through this, Twitter encourages not only youngsters but also politicians to take part in online discussions, answer questions of voters and engage in a civilised debate with their competitors.
The features and initiatives will be activated in six languages — English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese, and Malayalam, in the most dominant medium of languages in the respective polling states.
To put a spotlight on women in Indian politics, an initiative to bring new women candidates of parties called #HerPoliticalJourney, a video series where women political leaders talk about their personal stories with credible women news journalists.
Payal Kamat, Manager of Public Policy and Government at Twitter India, says that as public information during such times where people need to decide their right leader is crucial and Twitter is the platform the public discussion will always happen. As India is gaining deeper and deeper internet penetration, credible, authoritative and timely information is crucial of people to exercise their civil rights
She added that by leveraging the power internet, Twitter will actively encourage people to be part of this election.
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