If the discussions and deliberations at the All India Public Communicators Conference  are to be given attention to the thrust of Governments’ communication teams namely the Information departments could be shifting from mainstream media to the social media . The workshop organized by the information and Public Relations department of Karnataka  saw the emergence of social media channel as an effective communication tool for the state and central governments.

The advent of the social media has made its reach much bigger and quicker compared to mainstream media. Fact that every leading media house uses social media as a tool to propagate its content wider and faster, senior journalist Shekhar Gupta who delivered the key note address appealed to the government information officers and journalists to take to social media in a big way. Shekhar said,” In the age of hyper information, one cannot afford to be scared of social media. Even I was afraid of Twitter and Facebook. But I eventually got on it as I realised the importance of modern communication”

To better understand the pro-active role that the state information departments or public sector information officers  are expected to play ,, the Karnataka Information department team hosted  the two day All India workshop. Representatives from 13 states joined the workshop which adopted some novel best practices to be followed. With the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry coming up with a new Communications and Print Media policy it couldn’t have come at a better time.

The rising use and reach of Social media became the focal point of strategies to be followed for quick and easy dissemination of news. With political and Government heads adopting social media tools like Twitter and Facebook  with lesser reluctance than ever before , the general opinion emerged on how to rely on multi-layered strategies with social media. Vishu Kumar , Director Information , Karnataka felt,” The opinion that emerged out of the session on best practices was to develop government-led social media strategies . We aim to combine mainstream media with effective active use of the social media. Many states shared their views on the same as it helped the participants”

The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting who inaugurated the workshop highlighted the fact that his Ministry was planning a new communications policy that would provide for inter-State, inter-ministerial, coherent, and complementary communication projects.

Venkaiah Naidu in his address  said “Traditional media enables only one-way communication, but new platforms of social and new media enables instant and two-way communication between the government and the people. The challenge is how to make the best use of the media. Given the diversity of social, economic and geographic settings in our country, the traditional, new and social media platforms are important.”

Interestingly state information officers and public information officers also deliberated on how in the digital era the challenges of quicker communications were seeing the Government officials rework their strategies. Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah offered a word of advise to the representatives from 13 states “This is an era of transparency. Nothing goes unnoticed. Hence, I urge upon the officers to be proactive in covering events which critically look at the governance and deliverance of various schemes of the Government. Let us have an effective communication to build a strong nation”