Hyderabad: The Digital Media Wing of Telangana IT and Electronic and Communication (E&C) Department won the Public Relations Society of India’s (PRSI) National Award under “Communications Campaign of the Year – Covid 19” for the year 2020.
Sri Dileep Konatham, Director, Digital Media, received the Award in a virtual event held by PRSI. The Chief Guests at the Awards event were Sri Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Minister of Education and Smt Baby Rani Maurya, Hon’ble Governor, Uttarakhand.
The outreach initiatives of Telangana IT, E&C Department that were chosen for the PRSI Award under “Communications Campaign of the Year – Covid 19” category:
WhatsApp Chatbot
The government of Telangana had partnered with WhatsApp & SB Technologies and launched a dedicated Chatbot to provide accurate and timely information on the Covid pandemic to citizens. Telangana was the only state in India to have launched such a Chat Bot in three languages – Telugu, Urdu and English.
WhatsApp chatbot has served as one of the important components in the communication strategy to combat the dreaded Coronavirus. More than 3 lakh users registered for the chatbot making them direct beneficiaries of the service.
Telangana fact check portal
The fact check portal was launched on April 2, 2020. The information is generally useful for everyone in India who wants to keep apace with the Covid-19 updates. However, the portal focuses mainly on issues that concern the Telangana Government and its people.
The portal is the first of its kind initiative in India by a State Government. The IT E&C Dept. has partnered with fact-checkers who are signatories of the code of principles of a global community of fact-checkers. The website hosts articles on widely circulated posts on coronavirus on social media platforms and verifies the claims made therein.
About 5 lakh users had visited the FactCheck portal, making them direct beneficiaries of authentic information who would have passed on this information to many others benefiting them indirectly.