Stop faking! That’s the message the Congress party has for its rival BJP. Bombarded with what it calls fake news on social media, the Congress has made a debut on Instagram with ‘Shut The Fake Up’ campaign — party’s first online poll campaign.
The campaign has been launched recently to attract and involve young Instagram by the Twitter handle — @STFUIndianMedia.
Claiming it to be an initiative to call out the BJP regime and the fake news propaganda of the last five years, the Congress party has come up with the campaign to show how the trend of unverified news and information has affected the people of India.
“The first issue taken up as a part of this campaign was unemployment, where Congress targeted the Narendra Modi Government and media channels on the issue of not addressing the youth on the concern,” said Naresh Arora, the political strategist who is working closely with the Congress party and is looking after its digital marketing and social media campaigns.
The first post from this campaign brought about 50,000 views within the first hour of its launch, and the hashtag #ShutTheFakeUp managed to trend among the top 10 trends on Twitter during the day.
“Fake news and information has been in trend last five years, not anymore! Today, we launch a surgical strike against this fake propaganda with #ShutTheFakeUp. No more fake, no more fraudulent!,” read the tweet, which was posted with a short film on fake news.
Another tweet added, “When Unemployment Hits Nation and hits bad, media channels must sense an obligation to highlight this for the masses rather than focus over the attention seeking tactics of the ruling party.”
The campaign has been launched to counter BJP and media channels propagation of fake news and in the coming days, with the Congress party planning to bring forth more such issues in a creative manner. For the purpose, the Congress has selected three companies — Designboxed, Silver Push and Nixon Advertising — to handle its digital, social media and outdoor campaigns for the Lok Sabha polls.
