Social media sites out to attract young voters

Thus, Facebook India has introduced a unique ‘I am a Voter’ feature for its Indian users, with profiles in the above 18 age group category. Its ‘Election Day Message’ and ‘I am a Voter’ button becomes visible to voters having Facebook applications on their mobile phones only on the day polling takes place in their constituency.

The aim is to allow people to post a story to their Facebook timeline in order to share it with friends and to tell them that they voted in the elections. To avail this feature, users will have to cast their vote first and then update their status by clicking on the ‘I am a Voter’ button, supported by #LokSabha2014.

Earlier in 2013, Facebook had launched a campaign to encourage youngsters to become registered voters for the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, by launching the ‘Register to Vote’ feature. Through this initiative, Facebook allowed first-time users to log the day when they registered themselves in the voters list.

In addition to Facebook, the India election fever has also hit Google for it has launched a portal that provides details of all the candidates contesting from every constituency of the country. The company has also launched a campaign called #PledgeToVote, in which it has featured Shyam Negi, India’s oldest voter. It has also released a music video featuring Indian celebrities like Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, cricketer Virender Sehwag and film personalities Dia Mirza, Arjun Rampal, Hrishitaa Bhatt, noted singer Shaan and others.Similarly, Youtube has created a page for Lok Sabha elections 2014, which is a subset of the Google’s election Page. It contains videos from various news channels and other sources, thus making it a treasure trove of election information.

Over 23 million voters in the 18-19 year age group are expected to exercise their franchise in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. The country is said to have the world’s third largest Internet base with over 238 million users. It is estimated that Facebook alone has 100 million active users.

According to digital media experts, a large number of first-time voters are active on social networking sites in India and are the principal targets of political parties trying to increase their voter base. Some estimates indicate that social media platforms may have received up to a tenth of the Rs.40 billion to Rs.50 billion election advertisement largesse.

• India