About 15 million voters who are in the 18-19 age group will exercise their franchise for the first time in the upcoming General Elections. They are soft targets for political propaganda as they are not as familiar with the socio-economic and political system of India as experienced voters who have been doing this for a while now.
Unlike most ageing Indians who treat their political parties like their favourite football team, choosing who to vote for doesn't come easy for young voters. Moreover, in this day of information overload, deciding which information can be trusted is a humongous task in itself. This post is for those of you, first-timers, who might be similarly conflicted.
It is important to understand that our social media content is heavily manipulated. This forms the first step in seeking and finding diverse political content and thus diversifying your views.
Algorithms used by the social media giants dupe a user into believing that all the interesting pages and people encountered by him are just random on the internet. Companies are hiring psychologists who work along the engineers to keep the platform as engaging as possible. For instance, Twitter would encounter a sharp decline in traffic if it keeps on showing users tweets from people/ideologies they disagree with.
To keep their users happy, social media companies keep feeding their users with the content of their likes and previous browsing habits, thus creating an echo chamber, where dissenting voices or opposing views are suppressed.
The bombardment of jargon from all directions makes it difficult for the voters to get some real information about the political parties. Well, PRS India is one of the places on the internet to get substantial data on your area’s MPs and MLAs and reviews of bills and policies. It is an Indian non-profit organisation established to make the Indian legislative process better informed, more transparent and participatory.
This election, let's make informed choices.
