Empowering Voters Online And Covering Elections From A Train

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Empowering Voters Online And Covering Elections From A Train

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As we get closer to the general elections, media firms are putting all their weight behind covering the country’s biggest event. Many are launching dedicated websites and databases that help voters research more about parties and candidates.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Hindustan Times have joined hands to launch http://www.google.co.in/loksabha2009, which aggregates a large amount of data and news surrounding the elections. This is our personal favourite by far as it combines Google’s expertise in aggregating and organizing information with HT’s knowhow of Indian elections and is supported by a bunch of thinktanks that does a lot of ground work in collating this information. Mumbaivotes.com is another independent website that plenty of information about candidates and constituencies.

NDTV has launched a dedicated elections website that fails to stand out. It’s basically an elections news and opinion site with some elections data thrown in. Those, too, seem to have been copy-pasted from some official documents, with no effort made to present them better for the end user.

IBNPolitics.com was among the earliest off the block and receives a good amount of marketing support from the group’s news channels. The design template is similar to the parent website ibnlive.com, but the effort scores because it has some useful tools up top. Also, all data is presented well, with the help of neat graphics.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) News’ election website looks good, but doesn’t have the depth of information that the Google site, or even, IBNPolitics has gathered.

Medianama has an exhaustive list of election websites including those in regional languages.

While NDTV already has Election Express, a special bus that travels around the country covering the elections, the BBC has chosen to send its reporters in a train! From a release: “From Saturday, 25 April until Wednesday, 13 May reporters from the BBC’s Global News division will travel through India by train, investigating what Indians want from their General Election and the key themes surrounding it. On board the train will reporters from BBC World Service English, BBC Hindi, BBC Urdu, BBC Tamil, BBC Bengali, BBC Somali, BBC Swahili, BBC World News television, Arabic TV, Persian TV and BBC.Com/news. Highly knowledgeable about the country, a number permanently based there, the journalists will broadcast stories to the world, across radio, TV and online.”

Other efforts:

Indipepal.com, a recently-launched website that is “structured around three main services - content, social networking, and expert commentary”, also has a neat politics page.

Many of the professionals-turned-politicians, a breed that is getting a lot of press this elections, have all taken to the web to drum up support and reach their electorate. UN official-turned politician Shashi Tharoor has a bi-lingual website, while top banker-turned-politician Meera Sanyal is very active online with presence on Facebook and Twitter. Danseuse Mallika Sarabhai also has an active website and is present on Facebook and YouTube.