Hyderabad: Social media might be an emerging tool to engage with tech-savvy voters. But when it comes to advertising, political parties are sticking to conventional media like print and broadcast.
Election authorities in Hyderabad have not received any requests from political parties for pre-certification of social media adverts.
The latest guidelines issued by the Election Commission require political parties and candidates to obtain pre-certification prior to publication of the advertisements.
Several organisation have claimed that parties that are visible on the social media will play a key role in determining the outcome of the elections. A recent survey had said that social media like Facebook will impact voters in nearly 30 per cent of the parliamentary constituencies in the ensuing elections. Given this finding, it was expected that political parties would clamour to get on to the social media bandwagon to advertise, but that has not been the case.
Election authorities said requests were made only for broadcast and print advertisements. A. Sri Devasena, deputy chief electoral officer, said, “Pertaining to social media, we have not received any requests so far. The YSRC has asked for pre-certification for its broadcast adverts and that has been cleared. Other parties have also made requests. They will be cleared by tomorrow.”
Advertisement strategists of political parties say that social media advertisement is not on their mind. “It is more suited to national parties. We haven’t thought about advertising on the social media space. We are only looking at connecting with people, our followers and tweets,” an ad strategist said.
In guidelines issued last year, social media ads were also brought under the ambit of electronic media and made compulsory for pre-certification. According to election authorities, the BJP has asked for clearance for a magazine while the YSRC has released its short films. The Telugu Desam has applied for clearance to two types of advertisements, one for selection of candidates by voters. Congress has also applied for clearance to print advertisements on hoardings.
EC to keep tab on poll ads in social media, issues guidelines
New Delhi: Unprecedented expansion of social media use in campaigning during the electoral process has forced the Election Com-mission to issue detailed guidelines for political advertisements on such platforms.
The directive has asked political parties to obtain certification for content before putting them in public domain. The EC has asked social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to maintain expenditure incurred by the political parties and individual candidates on advertisements so that they can be produced to the commission when requested for.
The commission is also learnt to have issued separate letters to major social networking sites and directed them to ensure that content displayed by them during the electoral process was not “unlawful or malicious or violative of the model code of conduct”. It said the guidelines to the social media have been issued as part of the commission’s broad efforts to address the problem of paid news.
Election Commission (director) Dhirender Ojha said, “We have told the social networking sites to take pre-certification from media certification and monitoring committees at district and state levels.”
