By Moumita De Das
During this Covid-19 pandemic, ‘Development and Political Communication Online’ have ushered new vista altogether to redefine the future communication in the ground zero level but the core of communication is to reach out.
On 8h day of #MediaNext 2020 witnessed a convergence of six country’s top notch communicators who shared their journey and vision post this pandemic. The issues highlighted on this day were strength and weaknesses of social media, dearth of structured data, challenges of data protection, need for proper channel of communication on every aspect of development, essential aspects of listening by the Government agencies, proper health communication and finally self-branding and brand management. They shared their know-how with the students and faculties and made it a grand success.
Adamas University, Kolkata is hosting this digital conclave – #MediaNext 2020, which is a series of webinars with industry stalwarts from various domains spread over 10 days, starting June 1 to 10.
The topic of today’s discussion was “Development & Political Communication Online” it was moderated by Dr. Ambrish Saxena, Dean, Delhi Metropolitan Education, Noida
The first speaker of the session was Ankit Lal, Aam Aadmi Party Social Media Head, initiated the 8thday of MediaNext on how “a user became an engaged user” within the evolution of social media. He further shared how the COVID-19 had added a holistic format to the lives of the people. It had propelled us to contemplate not just technology, but education and other activities as well on social media and digital platform. He emphasised on how COVID-19 has kept a “Checks and Balance” on humans. The session got very interactive after Lal when referred about his book, ‘India Social: How Social Media is leading the charge and changing the country’. He said, “I have divided the book into 5 segments. First, Politics; Second, Social change- because the way social media has impacted social movement is beautiful; Third, How technology has impacted social media and vice versa; Fourth, how social media was used in the cases of natural disaster; Fifth, how social media was used by the Pop-culture.” He then explained how he approached the topics and draw inferences.
The second speaker of the day was Diggaj Mogra, Director of Jarvis Technology and Strategy Consulting and Advisor to National BJP enriched the audience about the growth of political consultancy in India, use of more social media and how the use of digital media would increase amid Corona Virus crisis. He said, “I don’t think this COVID-19 will go away easily and we have to live with it and political campaigns would also adapt to the current situation.” He mentioned about five technologies will be used in political campaigns.
Those are :
- Chatbots
- AI and Machine Learning
- AR & VR
- Granular Data
- Automated Content Generation
Mogra shared his concern about data security and also said, “India is very far away from using Digital Voting.”
Tushar Panchal, Founder and CEO of WarRoom Strategies, is a communication specialist and our third speaker of the day. Panchal was more cautious about social media and he said, “Government has started rising cautiously, they are now too much aware of what to speak, how to speak and what not to speak or at certain times keep their mouths shut. A single tweet can destroy the whole hard work of three months. Late Sushma Swaraj and Railways responded to people on Twitter, they used the social media platform as a tool”.
He suggested effective use of social media for political communication aspirants, and said, “Use the tool of social media, not be a tool.” Panchal coined a term ‘Propagandemic’ because he believed that pandemic was inclusive of lot of propaganda within it. Soon everything will come in order. The whole idea of fashion of communication will not change.
Communication in this pandemic situation is going to be more digital, creative, and exciting our fourth speaker, Devendra Tak, national manager and communication head of ‘Save the Children’ said. He also stated, “Just doing a story is not a primary task for a journalist. Journalism should help the community to grow and aid the country to become strong. Somewhere down the line we lost the track of that vision and it is the time to come back to reality and be responsible and be a change maker as journalists.” He suggested to all budding media professionals to be responsible and sensible especially with children. “For now the main challenge is to communicate with the people with little or no access in digital platforms,” said Tak.
Our fifth speaker, Augustine Veliath, Chairperson of the Nonviolence Project Foundation (India) shared his perspective on how communication disaster and distress management can be executed with efficiency. Veliath shared a case study of Jawaharlal Nehru and his political cartoonist friend Shankar who created 1500 cartoons on Nehru and those were satire, humour and sarcastic but to-the-point. He said, “But Nehru took the cartoons as the finest way of listening but now the situation is different and the present Government lacks the vision of listening.” He then drew example of Shailaja Teacher, the health minister of Kerala how she dealt with the Corona crisis. He shared his journey of polio eradication in the country. Finally said, “I don’t know why we called Migrant Workers, I travelled throughout the country no one addressed me like that…in Kerala they called them Guest Workers.”
Ushoshi Sengupta, former Miss Universe-I AM SHE and founder of USP and Playfest was our final speaker of the day. She shared her “JOURNEY TO MISS UNIVERSE”. Brand Management as the key point that she talked about in the session. She mentioned that the trust and honesty of a brand are entrusted in how people perceive the brand. Also, it is very important to find a brand to associate with whom your own brand had shared the space. Other important points she pointed were how to use influencer marketing and content marketing to create buzz and awareness about the brand. She then shared how she built her own brand, ‘Playfest’. Sengupta said, “A good brand is a brand that adapts to every situation.” Her final message to the audience was, “Look out for your call and master your own brand. Be child at heart and whatever you do, do with utmost honesty and create a change in the society.”
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