First time voters and a major share of the city’s voters are online in one form or the other. This has made it convenient for political parties to come out with interesting campaigns. Political advertisements even pop-up between videos played on YouTube or other websites and even while playing games in mobile applications.
Online and social media campaigns started coming up in a big way from the 2014 parliamentary elections. Officials in the district Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) are, however, yet to get clarity on monitoring the expenditures incurred for such campaigns.
Candidates active on the social media have more than a lakh followers in Facebook, while others are trying to build a list of persons who would ‘like’ their official page in that social networking site. While the MCMC members follow these pages, Whatsapp and the like are a new game for them.
The election commission is trying to have checks and balances on the contents in the internet and social media, by including columns for the candidates to mention their Facebook ID, twitter handles, their personal websites and other online links. Ten candidates were under MCMC’s scanner till Wednesday.
“There is a rate chart for newspaper advertisements, advertisements in radios and in television channels. But we don’t have one for online campaigns,” a senior MCMC official said. The guideline they got from the state election commission is to apportion the designing charges, which are very meagre, either on the party or on the candidate.
These campaigns also attract internet usage for the person publicising images, audio recordings and videos and the receiver. The officials said that they would be clueless on the reach of the messages unless the parties informed them. When it is a state-wide campaign of a party (without the candidate’s name) it is referred to the State Election Commission to take it up with the site’s owner or app developer.
Advertisements by candidates or parties in the social media can be informed to the MCMC for the Assembly segments in the district at 1800-425-5141. The committee has a 19-member team for monitoring expenditures of parties in the media. Now, their focus is paid news on newspapers.
