Ahead of Assembly elections, Twitter launches multilingual initiatives
What's the story
On Monday, Twitter announced that it is launching multilingual features to assist with the upcoming Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry this year.
The platform aims to facilitate productive debate and promote civic participation.
Twitter says the new features intend to encourage informed conversations among candidates, political parties, voters, society, and the media.
Six languages
Twitter announces collaboration with Election Commission for information prompts
Twitter will make an information search prompt to provide reliable details about the elections.
The data for the "election information prompt" will be provided by the Election Commission of India and state election commissions.
Besides support for hashtags in local languages, the prompt will be accessible in six languages—Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese, Hindi, and English.
Information-rich
Prompts will be visible on Home timeline and in Search
The prompts will be featured on people's Home timelines and in Search.
They will provide details regarding EVMs (Electronic Voting Machine), VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail), and information regarding voters' registration.
The Twitter prompts will also be used to display information about polling booths, postal ballots, COVID-19 restrictions, and accessibility among other topics.
Details
Video series 'Her Political Journey' will make a comeback
Twitter's primary objective is to avoid spread of misinformation on the platform.
Besides partnering with the state election commissions, the microblogging website has teamed up with platforms including Youth Ki Awaaz, and Association for Democratic Reforms.
Twitter will bring back Her Political Journey, a video series where eminent women politicians share their stories with women journalists.
Debunking myths
Successful implementation is dependent on Twitter's own active participation
Twitter also plans to debunk election myths with curated Twitter Moments.
Twitter India's manager for public policy and government, Payal Kamat said that the microblogging site is encouraging people across India to participate in conversations about the 2021 Assembly elections.
However, the successful implementation of these features is heavily reliant on swift and active participation of the government authorities and Twitter itself.