With the electoral bugle having been sounded, candidates and their supporters in West Bengal have begun their door-to-door campaigns. Much less noisily, a parallel campaign is underway, in which poll graffiti is scribbled on the ‘walls' of social networking sites and mute slogans raised on netizens' profiles.
Political parties and their supporters are relying on cyber-campaigns to reach out to an increasingly tech-savvy electorate like never before. While senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders have opened personal accounts on popular social networking sites to directly interact with voters, the Trinamool Congress has roped in Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia as a consultant to develop its web-campaign tactics.
A recent Calcutta High Court order that restricts the use of microphones for campaign purposes till April 13 due to the ongoing board examinations has only intensified the cyber-campaign. Interestingly, the use of the Internet as a poll forum is not limited to political leaders and workers. Those who do not have any connection with politics have begun holding online discussion forums, conducting polls and writing blogs.
Communities discussing the elections, political issues and the possible outcome populate social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter.
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