Govt pushing Digital India through social media contests

New Delhi: Since the launch of the Digital India initiative at the start of the month, the government has been organising a plethora of online contests to engage with citizens through various social media channels.

The latest, called the MyDigitalStory contest, was launched over the weekend. Under this, citizens can post a picture of any digital change that they come across on Instagram with the hash tag #MyDigitalStory, and win a reward.

The Digital India programme is being coordinated by the department of electronics and information technology and was approved in August 2014.

In a space of one month, there have been six other such contests, including giving captions to pictures, answering a series of questions through Twitter and solving a crossword through Facebook. There has also been a discussion on LinkedIn on the topic e-hospital.

These are attempts to push the digital inclusion initiative of the government under which it plans to provide Internet access to all, deliver services online and promote digital literacy.

However, the response to these contests has at best been moderate, with many past winners tweeting that they won but had not received their rewards yet.

“It does create a little bit traction but not much beyond that. These sort of contests are good if it is a brand,” said Naresh Gupta, managing partner, Bang In the Middle, an agency working on digital advertising.

According to Gupta, though such contests will make people talk about the Digital India initiative, it needs to be seen if these reach the right people, right context and start the right conversation.

As on 27 July, the official Twitter handle of Digital India (@_DigitalIndia) has 127,000 followers, the official Facebook page has 655,419 likes, and it has 1,022 followers on Instagram.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.