A group of 10 young students from IIT Bombay labored day and night to help Aam Aadmi Party get its manifesto shaped that promised people’ day to day suffers from water to WiFi and electricity to women’s security.
The 10 IITians were en bloc put on to trawl through flurry of social media posts to assess public opinion which later helped to make head points in the manifesto. To do the above, the students developed an algorithm that would sift through the main points and public opinion at any given point.
"Our main motive was to make a sentimental analysis which will give us numerical data on what's happening on Twitter. We made a tool which collects the data of 1000 AAP supporters, 1000 BJP supporter handles and some neutrals. Then, we analyzed them on a daily basis to see what was happening," said Divyank, one of the IIT students involved in developing the algorithm. "We didn't have money for print or electronic media. Social media was the only way," said another IIT student Ratnaik.
Mr. Kejriwal took the help of social media to assess public pulse. Delhi has more than 5 lakh users of Facebook and almost 2 lakh surf twitter. Mr. Kejriwal focused on these social media users as they are considered to be potential vote bank. He also used the social media app Mango, which became an Aam Aadmi ka radio, Quora, a Q&A site, online platform Frankly Speaking , Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and the results have been nothing less than simply rewarding.
- Manohar
