Out of the hundreds of pages that were purged recently by Facebook, only one happened to be from Telangana, and it belonged to the sole Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Raja Singh from Goshamahal. The MLA took to Twitter to whine: “My official Facebook page has been unpublished / removed couple of days back @facebook may I know the reason.” At a time when elections and summer are keeping the temperatures high across the country, Telangana has a strange phenomenon of a low-key campaigning. Even the cyber warriors of different parties appear indifferent to the elections.
The one time the social media temperature went up a notch was when a politician from Andhra Pradesh spoke about a plot to ‘give away’ the Machilipatnam port to Telangana.
After that it has been a downhill journey with a limited interest in social media buzz as the D-Day for elections draws closer. The campaigning in the State by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Congress party president Rahul Gandhi barely registered on social media even if the two leaders targeted each other and the ruling government in Telangana.
One indication of the lacklustre election season is the number of advertisements on social media. The Bharatiya Janata Party has nine active ads, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi has only four ads, and the Congress party has five ads.
Part of the dull election season is the fight against the fake news phenomenon and the new norms for political advertising in the country introduced by the Election Commission of India. A few days back, Google launched a toolbar where any suspect information can be searched for authenticity. This acts like another layer introduced by various social media companies to check fake news in the country.
On Tuesday, WhatsApp announced a tip-line in the country to crack open the fake news environment in the closed encrypted messaging site.
“This is another attempt at understanding the deeper issues underlying the Fake News phenomenon. It helps create a database so that further research can take place. It also helps users to seek more information and guidance when they are unsure about the authenticity of the information they have received via WhatsApp,” says Dileep Konatham, who heads the Telangana government’s digital initiative, and puts out regular updates on fake news.
Google fake news tracker: https://toolbox.google. com/factcheck/explorer; and WhatsApp tip-line: +91-9643-000-888