Srinagar, Mar 24: A few valley-based political parties are planning to create multiple phony accounts on several social media platforms and use them as a “troll army” to deal with the criticism against them and improve their overall image, The Kashmir Monitor has learnt.
Highly placed sources said the parties, both old players and news ones in the political arena, are in the process of employing people to monitor and use the social media channels as a tool to “counter criticism and build a positive image.”
“The parties are planning to create at least two to three thousand Facebook and Twitter accounts in the coming weeks. It is on a similar pattern as that of BJP, although not as extensive,” sources said.
The accounts, they said, would be used to post “positive messages” and, more importantly, counter any criticism.
“Whenever there would be a discussion about the leaders of these parties, these phony accounts would monitor it and even jump in to change the course of the discussion. Their job will be to shut out those critical of the party or its leaders,” sources added.
By this way, the parties, they said, aim to “clear misconceptions youth may have against them”.
“Apart from the traditional methods of campaigning for the parties, they also want to use these virtual platforms to target youth,” sources said.
With Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in fray, the political atmosphere in J&K is charged up these days.
Most of the prominent J&K politicians are very active on social media.
Among them, NC’s Omar Abdullah and PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti, exhaustively use Twitter to convey their messages or react to local, national and international developments.
Their posts on Twitter trigger a chain of reactions, which, most of the times, are picked up and reported by both print and electronic media.
Bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal too has a very strong social media presence: over 83,000 followers on Twitter and 1.53 lakh on Facebook.
In fact, his party ‘JK Peoples’ Movement’ that he launched earlier this month is asking people to join it by filing a form on its website. In the ‘how can you help’ section, the party has listed
‘Social media – FB Instagram etc’ and ‘Whatsapp Groups’ as one of the options new-joinees can choose from.
BJP was the first party to realise the potential of social media and is still formidable in the digital space.
It has approximately 1.2 million ‘volunteers’, an ever increasing network.
However, as per ‘I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army’, a 2016 book by journalist Swati Chaturvedi these ‘volunteers’ are “the BJP’s digital army” that constantly “peddle hate tweets and conspiracy theories and slander journalists.”
