With the Assembly Elections coming in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry, Twitter has announced a series of initiatives focused on encouraging informed and healthy conversations between candidates, political parties, citizens, media and society.
The initiatives include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections; a custom emoji to encourage participation; a series of pre-bunks and de-bunks to tackle election-related misinformation; and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the Assembly Elections 2021. These will be activated across six languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese and Malayalam.
Additionally, the service will bring back #HerPoliticalJourney, a video series where women political leaders talk about their personal stories with leading women news journalists.
Here are some details on the initiatives launched by Twitter for #AssemblyElections2021:
Election information prompt
Twitter has launched an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to make it easy to find credible and authoritative information about candidate lists, voting dates, polling booths, and EVM voter registration, among other election-related topics.
The ‘Election information prompt’ will be active in six languages including Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese, Hindi, and English, supporting more than 20 hashtags. Some of the hashtags include: #विधानसभाचुनाव2021, #বাংলার ভোট 2021, #കേരളാതെരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ്2021, #অসমনিৰ্বাচন২০২১, #தமிழ்நாடுதேர்தல்2021, #புதுச்சேரிவாக்கெடுப்பு2021
Custom emoji
Twitter has launched a custom emoji for the #AssemblyElections2021 to stimulate participation in election-related discussions. Featuring an inked finger to represent a citizen who has exercised their right to vote, the emoji is available now until 10th May, 2021. People can Tweet in English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Assamese and Tamil to activate the emoji.