Jun 26, 2014, Departments have been asked to create their accounts on social media and engage with the public on policy issues Modi government believes in direct communication with the public through social media. In fact Mr Modi on Wednesday became the fouth most followed global leader on Twitter beating White House. Mr Modi governmnet’s use of social media should not come as a surprise as he used social media to build a momentum for the BJP in the general elections. He successfully used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to his supporters and general public. So it is obvious that Modi government will also use this new powerful medium to propagate its polices and put their message across. Prime Minister has been active on his own personal Twitter account and also on the official account of the PMO. “Within weeks of his election in May 2014, the @NarendraModi account has moved into the top four most followed Twitter accounts of world leaders with close to five million followers,” said a study Twiplomacy. US President (@BarackObama), tops the world-leader list with a colossal 43.7 million followers and Pope Francis (@Pontifex) with 14 million followers on his nine different language accounts is second on the list. One of the latest picture put out by PMO’s Twitter account is that of Mr Modi giving sweets to a PMO official son who cleared civil services examination. Such powerful images help to build Prime Minister’s reputation. It is natural for the ministers to be asked to form Twitter and Facebook accounts. Departments have been asked to create their accounts on social media and engage with the public on policy issues. All the three top ministers of NDA government Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj have got Twitter accounts. Infact, when Mr Jaitley had to issue statement on important issue like rise in inflation and why he recused himself from Vodafone tax dispute issue, he depended on Facebook. In the past such statements were issued through government’s Press Information Bureau (PIB). Source: The Asian Age, Reference-Image: Flickr
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