LokSabha 2019: Parties create ‘war rooms’ for social media

PIMPRI: Various political parties and their candidates in the three parliamentary constituencies in and around the city have created ‘war rooms’ to make full use of the various social media for their own electoral gains.

All these parties and candidates have created an informal network of their workers and supporters to spread messages on  WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other media and gain political advantage over their rivals. The party supporters also troll their rival rivals. 

There is, however, a shroud of secrecy over the use of the social media so as to not come under the scrutiny of the Election which is monitoring daily expenses of political parties and poll contestants.

All political parties and the main candidates in Maval, Shirur and Baramati seats have already created special portals for the 2019 parliamentary elections. These portals are daily providing updates of their programmes. The poll contestants have created their own websites, providing information of the profile of the candidates, their contribution in various fields and their daily poll activities.

Skilled persons involved in production of short films are very much in demand during the ongoing poll campaign. 

These teams from the city are also much in demand in neighbouring districts as well for shooting the short films there.

The much longer duration of the poll campaign in the State this time is expected to provide financial income to skilled and unskilled persons for a longer period.  This is the first time that the Parliamentary polls in the State are being held in four phases.

Social media analyst Vinayak Pachlag said that the war rooms of these political parties and candidates are very active in sharing and forwarding political favourable news, activities, video clips and also negative information related to rival parties and contestants. 

“These campaigns can influence the voters and decide the poll outcome,” Pachlag said.