NEW DELHI: After its plan to penalise journalists identified as purveyors of fake newswas nixed by the PMO, the I&B ministry has now decided to set up a social media communication hub and deploy executives to monitor online content across each of India’s 716 districts.
The monitoring mechanism, once in place, will be able to read, contextualise and respond to content in most Indian and foreign languages across India, and will get a “360 degree view of the customers by integrating customer relationship management data with social profiles”. The platform will “personalise responses (on the) basis (of) the customer loyalty and past behaviours,” and will also help the ministry “identify influencers basis attributes like follower count”.
The initiative is being implemented through the ministry’s broadcast engineering arm, BECIL, which has mandated media hub teams to collect data relating to regional media and local events, monitor local editions of newspapers, cable channels, FM stations and important local social media handles. The teams will also check “the spread of fake and incorrect news and information”, conduct perception analysis on various events, and generate a minimum of six reports per day to be relayed back to the ministry.
What’s more, BECIL’s request for proposal to identify the service provider defines within the scope of work of the agency, the need for a social media analytical (SMA) tool. It says: “A technology platform is needed to collect digital media chatter from all core social media platforms as well as digital platforms like news, blogs and forums along with a proprietary mobile insights platform in a single system providing real time insights, metrics and other valuable data. The platform will be deployed in the private data centre and will need to integrate with the mobile platform database for a seamless view across all data platforms.”
While the SMA tool will have the “capability to crawl World Wide Web and social media to monitor and analyse various trends emerging and to gauge sentiment among netizens”, it will also be able to distinguish between “positive, negative and neutral social media conversations” in the context of the views of the I&B ministry.
‘Monitors will check spread of fake info’
The I&B ministry’s broadcast engineering arm, BECIL, mandated media hub teams to collect data relating to regional media and local events, monitor local newspapers, cable channels, FM stations and important local social media handles. The teams will also check “the spread of fake and incorrect news and information”, conduct perception analysis on various events, and generate a minimum of six reports per day to be relayed back to the I&B ministry.
BECIL’s request for proposal to identify the service provider defines within the scope of work of the agency, the need for a social media analytical (SMA) tool. It says: “A technology platform is needed to collect digital media chatter from all core social media platforms as well as digital platforms like news, blogs and forums along with a proprietary mobile insights platform in a single system providing real time insights, metrics and other valuable data.”
While the SMA tool will “crawl World Wide Web and social media to monitor and analyse various trends emerging among netizens”, it will also be able to distinguish between “positive, negative and neutral social media conversations” in the context of the views of the I&B ministry.
Sources in the government said the ministry has sanctioned Rs 20 crore for the project.
