EC to post poll results on FB, Twitter in real time

To use social media for speedy dissemination of information on counting of votes, the Election Commission is for the first time set to post the counting and final results of elections in five states on its Facebook page and Twitter handle.

Updated on: Nov 27, 2013, 01:51:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To use social media for speedy dissemination of information on counting of votes, the Election Commission is for the first time set to post the counting and final results of elections in five states on its Facebook page and Twitter handle.

The results would be available in a social media-friendly format that will help internet users to track which party or candidate is leading in a particular state or constituency.

“We are looking at how the information can be provided in an internet reader friendly format,” a senior EC official said.

The commission has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle but never before have they been used to display election results to a large social media audience.

The poll watchdog’s Facebook page has just 130 likes and Twitter handle has 120 followers, miniscule compared to other government organisations and public functionaries.

It is primarily because most of the information available on EC social media outreach is not updated frequently.

The EC has admitted that it was not pro-active on social media because of manpower constraints and said that “things would change” in the coming months.

The EC sees the counting of votes on December 8 as an opportunity to re-launch its social media presence and has realised that it could reach a wider audience through the emerging communication platform as done by civil society bodies engaged in electoral reforms.

The Association for Democratic Reforms is providing information on the past record of about 7,000 candidates contesting the current polls through Facebook.

About 11 million people in India follow Facebook and Twitter audience is 82 million strong, according to industry data. India this year recorded social networking growth of 37.4%, one of the highest in the world.

“Those tracking election results on the web would get authentic information as it would be sourced from the counting centers in the poll-bound states,” an EC official said, adding the technical details are being worked out.

The EC last week held discussions with internet platform companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to consider the possibility of quick flow of information.

The commission wanted to know whether such a huge flow of data of about 7,000 candidates could be handled by the servers.

“That will not be an issue,” said an official of one of the companies which participated in the meeting in EC.

Official sources privy to the meeting also said the Google was also interested in tracking the election results through its various internet tools including Google Maps.

The EC is examining whether the information sought can be directly provided to Google or not.

The assembly elections results would be an experiment before the EC uses the internet platforms for attracting growing social media traction during 2014 general elections.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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