Bhubaneswar/New Delhi: At a time when Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik along with his rank and file are going head over heels to be ‘visible’ on social media including Twitter and Facebook to get that connect with masses, one of the BJD MPs has recently tagged Twitter as a ‘juvenile form of communication’.
Speaking to a leading television channel in a one to one interview, BJD MP Pinaki Mishra was ‘to the point’ when he said he does not get into the social media platform and avoids it. "I believe its a juvenile form of communication,’’ he said answering a question on the latest war of words between two BJD MPs Baijayant Panda and Tathagata Satapathy. "When you are sitting up late at night and getting bored you shoot up something on such platforms. But it was light hearted and there is no infighting in the party,’’ he immediately added.
For the uninitiated, Naveen Patnaik’s official twitter handle was opened in 2015 and so far has 143 K followers with 1395 tweets. He also has another official twitter handle CMO Odisha which was opened in 2016 and has 62 k followers, tweeting 1930 times.
MP Baijayant Panda, who is very active on the platform, has 227 k followers with 10.4 k tweets, Energy minister Pranab Prakash Das has more than 1500 followers and Ranendra Pratap Swain has 3,607 followers and 5945 tweets. Interestingly, the BJD also has a twitter handle which has 26.4k followers and 3683 tweets.
Director general of police KB Singh had recently directed concerned police ranges and districts to open official Facebook and Twitter accounts to better connect with people.
With the Twitter registering 317 million monthly active users and 500 million tweets per day, the platform has emerged as the most popular, elitist and crisp form of communication. Even the BJP’s strategy to make best use of social media was instrumental in giving the party a thumping win in the country’s heartland UP.