Twitter India- Youth engagement initiative #PowerOf18 unveils latest research findings on youth in Tamil Nadu
Youth engagement initiative #PowerOf18 unveils latest research findings on youth
in Tamil Nadu
Chennai, March 2019: Twitter is about serving the
public conversation, highlighting what’s happening in the world and enabling
people to talk about it right now. As part of its youth engagement
initiative #PowerOf18,
Twitter India unveils new research findings today specific to the youth
sentiment in Tamil Nadu on social media and the elections at the Asian College
of Journalism in Chennai.
Panellists Sudarshan Ramabadran (@sudarshanr108),
Senior Research Fellow and Administrative Head, Center for Soft Power, India
Foundation and Convenor, Tamil Nadu Young Thinkers Forum, and Arun
Krishnamurthy (@ArunEFI),
Indian environmental activist with Environmentalist Foundation India, join
Twitter at the #PowerOf18 college dialogue session, sharing their
perspective on what it means to turn 18 and the importance of voting in the
upcoming elections. This is the first in a series of college dialogue sessions
that Twitter India will be hosting; Bengaluru and Lucknow are slated next.
Twitter is where people can serve
the public conversation; two in three
(66.9%) of the youth on Twitter in Tamil Nadu surveyed believe that they are
contributing to the public debate by posting on the platform. More
than half (58.4%) of the Twitter users
surveyed will actively engage with and raise concerns to the government on
issues that affect them or their community, versus 30.8% of those not on the
platform. In addition, 57.8% of the youth in Tamil Nadu
surveyed use Twitter to express their opinions and be heard, while 56% will use
Twitter to gather support for a cause or movement.
Across the board, the population
in India is politically active and the survey finds on average98% of Tamil Nadu youth indicate that they
would vote in the upcoming elections. This is the highest
proportion of youth voter interest in comparison with all other states surveyed
in the country. In comparison, Twitter users (99.4%) surveyed were more likely
than those not on the platform (94.9%) to vote in the upcoming elections.
Over 85% of Tamil Nadu youth
surveyed will turn to social media to find out what’s happening in India and around the world,
according to the study’s findings. The rising importance of social media for
information consumption is reinforced as Tamil
Nadu youth surveyed rank social
media platforms as the most important source for understanding
what’s happening in India and around the world, in comparison to all other
mediums including newspapers, TV, and public events.
