Maharashtra sanctions Rs 10 crore for media monitoring cell

MUMBAI: State government has sanctioned Rs 10 crore to set up and operate a media monitoring cell. According to a proposal of Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR), an agency will be appointed to monitor, analyse and report the news in print, electronic, social and digital media in a scientific manner.

The agency will set up and operate media monitoring centre to provide information on dashboards & mobile apps. The agency will be appointed for a year, and if its work is up to the mark, its contract can be extended by two years.

"In order to increase the impact of this cell, the cell will observe the positive and negative information related to the govt disseminated through news media such as print and electronic media, as well as social and digital media, online news websites, and news apps. It will point out in real-time if negative information and misleading content are being disseminated, to create a mechanism to implement it in a faster manner," a govt resolution said.

In the first phase, news media like print, electronic, social, and digital media, online news websites, and news apps have been considered. In the second phase, if some new media come in the future, they will also be included in this plan. The contesting agency appointed to operate the cell will carry out the collection and analysis of news and information. Its role will include the presentation of clippings of important newspaper reports in PDF format, with positive or negative categorisation arranged by section, topic, event and individual tagging. "News will be monitored throughout the day, with an hourly alert on trends, moods, and tones," the GR stated. TNN

The monitoring cell will be open from 8 am to 10 pm. "It will analyse the content broadcast in all media and report subject-wise, district-wise, section-wise, event-wise, and individual-wise. It will prepare daily, weekly, monthly, and on-demand reports according to various categories and topics. A dashboard and a mobile application will be provided to handle all this information in one place. The centre will analyse and report on mass media response to government policies and schemes. False or incorrect news or information disseminated through the media may disturb the peace of the state. Against this backdrop, there must be an analysis system/app/system to prevent the spread of misinformation and fake news-content being disseminated through the media," the GR said.

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