Social media a strong medium to interact with people: Akhilesh

, Aug 9:

Chief Minister

today termed the

as a strong and effective medium to interact with people, saying the latest techniques should be adopted to benefit the masses.

The Chief Minister was speaking on the occasion of inauguration of a workshop "Social Media for Democracy" for ministers and MLAs, where these politicians got to learn about the role of social media -- Facebook, Twitter, Google and Watsapp in helping and needs of the people.

The 41-year-old UP CM, who had already taken to twitter route to reach the masses and publicise the policies and decisions of his government, said public representatives can use social media to propagate their thoughts to the people and to get their suggestions.

The workshop was organised by Fifth Estate Trust, Digital Empowerment Foundation and India Development Alternatives Foundation. India head of Twitter India Raheel Khursheed informed the participants about the unique experiments being done on use of social media by the people associated with politics across the world.

Piyush Poddar of Google India threw light on utility of authorised sites for elected representatives, specially MLAs. He also talked about taking their things to the people by uploading videos on You tube and creating profile on Facebook and Google plus.

Devendra Singh Bahdauria and Rucha Pandey of Digital Entertainment Foundation informed about use of social media for connecting with the people of a constituency. The speakers said that Watsapp was an effective medium to interact and contact with the people. The Uttar Pradesh government has already taken to twitter route to inform the people about its policies, programmes and decisions.

PTI