For a sharper delivery of the government’s message to the voters, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (I&B) on Monday approved the hiring of 716 social media executives, one for each district of the country.
Their primary responsibility will be to analyse local news media and help the government adapt the message according to the responses to it.
The responsibility of these executives will be to “monitor local editions of newspapers, local cable channels, local audio channels and important local social media handles for important local developments”.
They will also have to analyse the news to assess whether the government’s message was received positively or negatively.
This hiring is part of the Ministry’s outreach programme for smaller cities and rural areas.
“Till now, the government has largely reacted to opinions based out of the capital, giving a very lopsided view. It is a first-time effort to hear closely what people are saying on the ground beyond the big cities,” a senior Information and Broadcasting official explained.
Structured campaign
The social media executives will be expected to run a structured campaign to highlight the Modi government’s achievements.
The new media wing is being set up by the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL).
Recently, the Ministry also did real-time monitoring of public online conversations around the word ‘Budget’. All online conversations on open forums like Twitter, public Facebook pages, blogs and so on were read closely by a small unit set up by I&B Minister Smriti Irani.
Jaitley’s speech
Based on the analysis of the group, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was told to change the message.
“For example, there was much uproar when Mr. Jaitley prefaced his announcement for the standard deduction of ₹40,000 on health and transport expenses to salaried classes with the phrase that he would make no changes in personal income tax slabs. Mr. Jaitley’s speech was misunderstood but by the time he gave his press conference, he cleared the air based on our monitoring of the responses,” said a senior Ministry official.
