With Assembly elections coming up in five States, micro-blogging platform Twitter on Monday announced a dedicated ‘information search prompt’ in six languages with the Election Commission of India and State Election Commissions to tackle misinformation and provide reliable details related to elections.
The U.S.-headquartered firm has also rolled out a multilingual youth discussion series in India ‘DemocracyAdda’ aimed at driving voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians, along with a video series ‘HerPoliticalJourney’ that will focus on women political leaders.
“With the Assembly Elections 2021 taking place in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry, [We have] announced a series of initiatives focused on encouraging informed and healthy conversations between candidates, political parties, citizens, media, and society,” the company said in a statement.
Other measures included a custom emoji to encourage participation and a series of pre-bunks and de-bunks to tackle election-related misinformation. These initiatives will be activated in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese and Malayalam.
Payal Kamat, Manager Public Policy & Government, Twitter India, said, “Public conversation is critical during elections, and Twitter is where this unfolds. With digital penetration accelerating in India, more people now have access to credible, authoritative and timely information — crucial tools for exercising their civic rights.”
The company added that it was staying ahead of potentially misleading information about how and where to vote by publishing a series of pre-bunk prompts across languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, based on content by the national and State Election Commissions and civil society partners such as Youth Ki Awaz, Association of Democratic Reforms.
“The prompts will appear on people’s home timelines and in Search, including information about how to register to vote, and details on EVMs and VVPATs. The prompts will also serve the public with relevant voting information about booths, postal ballots, COVID-19 restrictions and accessibility, among other topics,” it said.
Further, the service will focus on de-bunking critical issues as they arise with a curated Twitter Moment. These Moments are created based on high standards of accuracy, impartiality and fairness and are designed to feature compelling, original, and diverse content.
