KARACHI: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which lost its recognizable bat electoral emblem, has introduced a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to assist its fans in locating the symbols assigned to party candidates running in the elections scheduled for February 8.
On January 24, the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the PTI declared that voters could write Imran Khan’s official Facebook page directly to learn the symbols assigned to the PTI-affiliated candidates. [The post had 346,500 views at the time the story was filed].
“Another creative way to locate the PTI-nominated candidate for your constituency, along with the designated electoral symbol!” reads the post. Simply provide your constituency number in a message on Imran Khan’s official Facebook page, and you will get the information shortly.
Through Facebook’s “Automated responses” feature, the party has made it possible for people to learn the electoral emblems of candidates running from their local areas.
The message bot is quicker than that, even though the article on X states that the information will be available in a few “minutes.” The response appears in a matter of seconds (The News tested it and it took five seconds).
The response is divided into two messages: the first includes the candidate’s information and the electoral symbol, while the second includes a link to the public WhatsApp channel set up specifically for constituency-related information. Short snippets of Imran Khan’s letter to his followers and voters from jail are also included.
On the internet, worker-led initiatives are also supporting the PTI. For instance, an unidentified X user and party employee has independently released “Insaf Ka Nishan,” an offline Android-compatible app that offers details about PTI candidates. Launched on January 23, 2024, the upgraded version of the app has been downloaded 1,589 times thus far.
Other political parties have not effectively embraced the social media age and are mostly reliant on demonstrating their street power, while the PTI is using the resources at its disposal to convey its message and move on from its defeats.
Asad Baig, the founder of Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) and an advocate for digital rights, remarks to The News about the effectiveness of political parties in the internet sphere, saying,
“The lack of documentation or mapping of [the political parties’ digital campaigns] makes it difficult to analyze [which party] is performing better.”
To further explain, Baig says, “The PTI utilized a constituency management system (CMS) in 2018, which was essentially an app with a voter database. I believe they have developed a comparable CMS and are utilizing it this time as well. I think that this technology use can help parties run better election campaigns.
However, he believes there are a few restrictions. For example, “the political parties’ lack of digital literacy prevents them from utilizing technology to its full potential. In these political organizations, the use of technology is trending a little slowly. I believe political parties are the primary users of social media.
