Central Government to set up social media communication hubs in all districts

Central Government to set up social media communication hubs in all districts

The ministry of information and broadcasting is in the process of setting up a social media communication (SMC) hub in every district across the country that will be the eyes and ears of the government and report back with real-time updates from ground zero.

Sources in the ministry told that the finance committee has sanctioned Rs 17 crore for this fiscal year for setting up 707 SMC hubs, hiring personnel, development of software and other infrastructure related expenses.

Around 20 social media analytics executives per hub will provide ‘reports on sentiment, reach, details relating to trending topics and hashtags and compile six reports per day’ to begin with. As part of the project, new software is being developed for the hubs that will enable two-way communication and help disseminate information.

The platform is expected to use predictive analytics in a bid to study how “public perception (can) be moulded in a positive manner for the country, how could nationalistic feelings be inculcated in the masses, how can the perception management of India be improved at the world…”
The tendering process for software development for the hubs was initiated on Wednesday byBroadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited, a public sector enterprise under the Ministry.

Underlining the project requirements, the ministry stated in the tender document, “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…The platform is expected to provide automated reports, tactical insights as well as comprehensive workflows to initiate engagement across digital channels. The platform maybe used to disseminate content and hence should support publishing features.”

The platform will eventually power a realtime New Media Command Room and operate in Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil, along with English.

“The tool should act as the guiding tool for the ministry to understand the impact of various social media campaigns conducted on various schemes run by the government… It has to give location-based insights, measure the effectiveness of hashtag campaigns, needs micro-level categorisation for mentions around topics, which, in turn, should help in efficient decisionmaking by identifying the key problem areas,” states the tender document.