JOIN USFor the tech-savvy candidates, the social networking sites have turned perfect platforms to campaign and educate their potential voters.
Hooked on to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and a whole range of such sites round the clock, the young voters might find such campaigns easy to digest, simple to take decisions. Yet, not every candidate is convinced by the power of this online media.
In these elections, Congress candidate Krishna Byre Gowda, and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy are among those hyperactive on the net. Kumaraswamy has even set up an IT media cell to regularly monitor and update his day-to-day campaign.
Former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa too has logged on to Twitter and Facebook, creating pages dedicated to the election. Krishna Byre Gowda has a separate IT team working for him. A page called krishnabyregowda.in informs the voters about how different he is from the other candidates.
Law Minister Suresh Kumar, Basavangudi MLA Ravi Subramanya, Yelahanka MLA S R Vishwanath are all active. So is Sridhar Pabbisetty of Lokasatta party and Rakshith a student contesting from Rajaiinagar.
These campaigns have attracted the attention of potential voters such as Harman Sethi, an employee of Ernest and Young. Says he, “The pages are both professional and informative. But I am unsure how viable they are, since today, most of the educated population do not vote.”
IT professional Aditya had also seen such pages. “However, those pages did not grab my attention because I do not intend to vote in this election. Politics is not my cup of tea,” he says frankly. Ravindra Nayak, a retired bank employee, feels such social networking sites are used by politicians only to glorify themselves and nothing else.
Although Gopika Saraswati, an IT employee, is yet to come across such a site by accident, she would look for information on a candidate’s educaitonal qualifications and past experiences. “His prospects for the future will not affect me as they are mostly made up to convince the public to vote for them.”