After losing its distinctive bat electoral symbol, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has introduced a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to assist its supporters in identifying the electoral symbols assigned to party candidates participating in the February 8 elections.
On January 24, the PTI’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) announced that voters could discover the symbols allotted to PTI-affiliated candidates by sending a direct message to Imran Khan’s official Facebook page. [At the time of this report, the post had garnered 346,500 views].
The announcement reads: “Another innovative way to find PTI-nominated candidates for your constituency, along with the allotted electoral symbol! Just send a message to Imran Khan’s official FB page with your constituency number, and you will receive the information within a few minutes.”
Another innovative way to find PTI nominated candidate for your constituency, along with the allotted electoral symbol!
— PTI (@PTIofficial) January 23, 2024
Just send a message to Imran Khan’s official FB page https://t.co/ck6e4L0vNg with your constituency number & you will receive the information within a few… pic.twitter.com/YjpBJ9FX5a
The party has leveraged Facebook’s ‘Automated responses’ feature to enable voters to learn about the electoral symbols of candidates contesting in their constituencies.
Although the X post suggests that the information will be available within a few ‘minutes,’ the messaging bot responds even faster. The reply is received within a few seconds (five seconds during The News test).
The response comprises two messages: the first provides details of the contesting individual and the electoral symbol, while the second offers a link to the public WhatsApp channel created for information related to that constituency. It also includes short clips of Imran Khan’s message from jail to his supporters/voters.
Since losing its ‘bat’ symbol, the PTI has devised various strategies to inform people about the symbols allotted to its candidates, now contesting as independents. The party has also launched insaf.pk/election2024 and a backup webpage ‘pticandidates.com’ to enable people to discover the symbols allotted to PTI-affiliated candidates.
The webpage requires visitors to enter the constituency number, instantly displaying the candidate’s name and symbol. At the end of the page is a link to join the ‘halqa’s’ (constituency) WhatsApp channel.
However, the PTI’s official website ‘insaf.pk’ is currently inaccessible. Bytes For All confirmed this in a post on X on January 24: “Local probing by @OpenObservatory confirms that http://insaf.pk (the official website of PTI, a political party in Pakistan) is currently not opening in the country. However, it is accessible via VPNs.”
Worker-led initiatives online are also supporting the PTI. For instance, an anonymous X user and party worker independently launched an offline Android-compatible application, ‘Insaf Ka Nishan,’ providing information about the PTI’s candidates. The app’s updated version was released on January 23, 2024, and has been downloaded 1,589 times.
While the PTI utilizes available tools to convey its message and overcome setbacks, other political parties have not embraced the social media age effectively and rely mostly on showcasing their street power.
Digital rights advocate and founder of Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) Asad Baig commented on the performance of political parties on the digital front, stating, “It is difficult to analyze which political party is performing better because there is no documentation or mapping of the parties’ digital campaigns.”
Baig explained, “In 2018, the PTI used a constituency management system (CMS), which was essentially an app with a database of voters. I believe that they have created a similar CMS this time as well. The use of technology can enhance parties’ election campaigns.”
However, Baig highlighted several limitations, such as the lack of digital literacy within political parties. He noted that the use of technology in political groups is slow and that social media is primarily used to weaponize narratives and launch attacks on each other. He added that the use of social media or digital platforms for election campaigns among political parties is rare.