L J Ravi ShareChat to drive awareness around COVID 19 with #FightingCorona Campaign · More than 50 news partners across languages are engaging with 60 mn ShareChat users around Coronavirus related content on the platform · Committed to debunk conspiracy theories, fake news and misinformation on the platform through its third party fact checking partners · To launch chatbot with verified information on Covid 19 INDIA ShareChat, India’s own social media platform, today announced the launch of #FightingCorona campaign in order to drive awareness amongst its users on Covid -19 in all 15 local languages across India. The intent behind the initiative is to share and promote the right information on the virus among its 60 million monthly active users. As a support to the initiative, important stakeholders like news partners, doctors and health practitioners, and relevant authorities have come forward to educate and create awareness around Covid19 with the right set of information across 15 regional languages available on the platform. The information are majorly disseminating through the below hashtags in regional languages: · Precautions for coronavirus · Latest News/ Coronavirus update · Coronavirus Helpline/Whom to call · Wash Your Hands/Hand Wash Challenge · Stay away from crowd/Home Quarantine · · Do Namaste, not handshake For instance, Dr Ashwin Vijay from Tamil Nadu and Dr Debtanu Bannerjee, from Kolkata have volunteered to clear the doubts with respect to the Coronavirus and provide necessary guidance to the users on the platform in Tamil and Bengali respectively. Also, Hospital Yalamaal in Chennai is using the ShareChat platform to drive awareness related to the virus and addressing people’s queries on the platform.. Over 50 News partners of ShareChat including Aajtak, News18, ABP, News Nation, Zee news, BBC India, PTC, TV 9 Marathi and Gujarati, News J Bangla, Saam TV etc are also using the platform to provide real time updates on the pandemic in local languages to the people. ShareChat is encouraging users to avoid posting factually inaccurate or unverified content. The platform only ensured official updates from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and other verified sources, which are displayed when users search for certain hashtags. Any factually inaccurate information, if found or being reported by users, are removed from trending feed of any content on the platform.The platform is also utilising its existing relationship with multiple third-party IFCN accredited fact checkers to fact check content in 13 languages on the platform and debunk conspiracy theories, fake news and misinformation. The platform is collating information directly from MoHFW through a webcard and is available across 15 languages on the platform. Moreover, a chatbot will be integrated, in partnership with ALL_IN_Call, for providing verified details related to coronavirus to the users. It will include Helpline numbers for various states, location of testing centres, and more information on coronavirus (such as its symptoms, and how to stay safe). The chatbot will be available in Hindi in the first phase and may spread across other languages depending on users’ feedback.
