'Social media the major medium for electioneering'

Social media is the major medium that will be used for electioneering as it provides an equal opportunity to all political parties, informed sources revealed to Business Recorder. Those political parties that have been targeted by the Taliban have now turned almost exclusively to the social media as the major component of their election campaign.
However given our high illiteracy rates and rising poverty this particular medium is restricted to the educated urbanites. It is therefore no wonder that corner meetings and door-to-door canvassing are also a major part of the strategy of those parties that are under threat from the Taliban namely the PPP, MQM and ANP.
Social media provides a level-playing field to political parties from far right to left, however, the target group would be the youth, sources disclosed. Social media is more in use by the young than any other age group, and nearly all major political parties have launched vigorous election campaigns to get attention of voters using social media channels.
Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) was the first political party to mobilise youth across the country by using social media like Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Youtube. However other parties soon realised the effective reach of social media and other political parties prominently Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) followed the suit.
At present all parties are engaged in mobilising social media including Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Awami National Party (ANP), Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Awami Muslim League, APML and some hardcore religious political parties including Jamaat-i-Islami which is employing different social media networks along with other older methods of motivating people to vote for them. However, one exception is JUI-F which is publishing pamphlets, wall-chalking, using loudspeakers (which are banned in the code of conduct) and through Khutbaas in mosques and seminaries.
Following dominance of PTI on social media, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the daughter of Nawaz Sharif, established a state-of-the-art media centre in Lahore, while former chief minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif also started using Twitter and Facebook. Candidates from different political parties are frequently seen using the social media networks for uploading speeches, photographs, advertisements, posters, snaps and videos of their election rallies held across the country.
"Social media is a good platform to reach out to the younger generation and to an extent, the older generation, too," said an IT expert Zeeshan Javed, adding after another five years everything would be completely changed as the world had already been turned into a global village due to boom in IT sector.