Staying away from fake news, foraying into new social media platforms, focusing on video content and increasing the volunteer base and WhatsApp network groups are some of the measures adopted by the political parties in the Capital ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Representatives of all the three major parties have instructed volunteers not to put out fake information, verify facts before posting them online and not make jokes or use abusive language on social networking sites.
BJP’s social media and IT head in Delhi, Punit Agarwal, said that while fake news might get a lot of traction for a short while, it ultimately backfires in the form of trolls. “I always tell our volunteers to popularise the achievements of our party and seek votes. Fake news is for those who haven’t done any work.”
Busting fake news and calling out hypocrisy of opposition leaders through old tweets are two major planks of AAP and Congress,” Mr. Agarwal added.
ShareChat comes to aid
Meanwhile, one route to tackle fake news has come in the form of ShareChat, a social media app developed in India, that allows users to post different forms of content, including text, videos and images similar to a Twitter or Facebook feed, in up to 14 languages.
While content on this platform can be accessed directly through the app, social media in-charge of the Aam Aadmi Party, Ankit Lal, said its biggest advantage is the seamless integration with the messaging app WhatsApp. Explaining the role it can play in tackling fake news, he pointed out how ShareChat posts that are forwarded on WhatsApp are tagged with the name of the person, who originally posts it -- something akin to a watermark. “This makes it easy to track from where fake news or abusive contents are coming,” he said.
Additionally, posts on ShareChat are getting a lot of traction with the AAP handle getting 3.9 million views for just 171 posts and the BJP Delhi handle getting 5.5 million views for 178 posts. Posts on the platform, which are largely in regional languages, are reaching out to audiences in tier-II cities, Mr. Agarwal said.
The Delhi Congress has not made a ShareChat account so far.
WhatsApp top choice
While Twitter is identified as a platform to primarily reach out to “influencers” and members of the press who might be able to amplify certain messages, to reach voters on the ground, WhatsApp remains the top choice. All three parties have devised hierarchical structures of volunteers to reach out to community-based WhatsApp groups, to spread their message. Party representatives maintained that all volunteers are unpaid and work purely for their love of the party.
Chairman of social media and IT cell of Delhi Congress, Aniruddh Sharma, said: “You know those people who send good morning messages every day, they have a social media bug in them. We recruit such people and ask them to spread our messages instead.”
The Congress has appointed a chairman and a State co-ordinator for social media. There are seven Lok Sabha social media convenors, 70 Assembly level convenors, about 280 block-level convenors as well as booth-level convenors for the over 13,000 booths in Delhi, he said. Members at the booth level are connected on community-based groups and help spread the party’s message. However, they have not been made Congress office-bearers as the party cannot be held responsible for everything they say, Mr. Sharma said.
Research team
Apart from this, the party is also running a centralised research team which undertakes fact checking and identifies issues that can be taken up, a content team which is producing posts to be shared through their groups, an operations team that manages the parties social media accounts, and a training team that instructs volunteers on dos and don’ts and teaches them on how to make multimedia content, Mr Sharma said. Booth-level organisers are also being instructed to post about civic issues and tag the Prime Minister in them as part of the campaign. He added that videos of interviews with people works well as a form of testimony from a third party. These are targeted at youth, who are unlikely to be well informed about Delhi’s political history.
5,000 AAP volunteers
AAP’s social media is run by a core group of about 20 people, followed by a support group of 200 people and about 5,000 other volunteers, said Mr. Lal. He added that this number is likely to swell. The party has been running constituency-based helpline numbers for people to complain about local issues since 2012, which is added to local WhatsApp groups as they already have a connect with the community, said Mr. Lal. Through this, content that is going viral on local WhatsApp groups is tracked, combated and the parties own messages are spread. Volunteers are only given a brief of the issue being raised and allowed a free hand to develop their own content, added Mr. Lal. He also said that there is regularly a two-way communication between the social media team and volunteers in case there are differences in opinion.
The party is also focusing on making video content regularly given the rise in access to high-speed Internet and smartphones. Mr. Lal said the aim is to make short clips of 30 seconds. The party’s video team is making at least two a day apart from running live videos of press conferences, said Mr. Lal.
Meanwhile, the BJP has appointed seven Lok Sabha social media convenors. Each Lok Sabha constituency has been divided into two “districts”, with a coordinator for each “district”. Apart from this, there are block-level coordinators and a social media team of about five people for each booth. There are nearly 70,000 volunteers. These arrangements are made following instructions from the BJP’s top leadership, Mr. Agarwal said.
In terms of messaging, Mr. Agarwal said that volunteers are focusing on achievements of the Modi government, failures of the Kejriwal government and keeping an eye on the Congress’s national leadership. In response to tactics of other parties in bringing up old tweets, he dismissed them as gimmicks and said while they are keeping a watch on them, the party isn’t specifically countering them at the moment. On trolling, Mr. Agarwal said that every party has such social media accounts, but the BJP draws more flak as they are the ruling party.
Regarding sponsored content, Mr. Agarwal said while the party had put out advertisements on Facebook to attract more attention to its page earlier, no ads were put out since the implementation of the model code. He said that the party is examining the rules laid down by the Election Commission of India. The ECI had said that advertisements on social media will have to be reviewed by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee set up at the State and district levels.
Meanwhile, in an effort to increase transparency in political advertisements, Facebook recently launched “Ad Archives” which allows anyone to track political ads, view the demographics and the amount of money spent. From February to March 9, Facebook’s ad archive report shows that the BJP Delhi’s Facebook page had spent ₹15,900 on 12 ads. Interestingly, a majority of these ads are viewed by men in the age group of 25 to 34 and from States of UP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh more than those in Delhi. For the same period, Facebook data shows that AAP had spent ₹26,537 on 18 ads. Mr. Lal said that these ads were only inviting people to donate to the party. Here too, the ads are primarily viewed by men. He said that it is found that mostly men are responding to the ads and Facebook’s algorithm perpetuated this.
While, major Internet companies have committed to help the ECI in the elections, Mr. Lal said that the interventions of social media companies are not enough. Despite regularly reporting fake news through sites like Alt News and Boom Live, fabricated information is not being taken down. Additionally, proxy accounts of political parties and accounts of “influencers” who are affiliated to certain parties are not being watched for fake news, he added.
