Political campaigns come to WhatsApp
As the application that more than 700 million users use throughout the world, it was only a matter of time before the politicians use it to contact directly with the citizens Or for them to do so with they. At least that is the initiative taken by the candidate for the Valencian Community for UPyD, Toni Cantó, who has provided their phone number to directly receive all kinds of proposals and messages from citizens. Something quite innovative but already overwhelming just hours after going live.
Apparently, this is a proposal framed within the campaign You are the voice, with which they want to get in direct contact and "give the floor to the residents of the municipalities of the Region so that they explain what problems they detect in their neighborhoods and what solutions they propose" To do this, and through Other social networks such as Twitter, have published the telephone number 689316354 for citizens to find it. Add them to your agendas and you can access WhatsApp where you can find Toni Cantó as a contact for the messaging application
The experiment seems to have been a success, at least in terms of the influx of messages.And it is that the politician himself affirms in his social networks that cannot answer all the messages immediately due to the incoming volume. However, he seems to be struggling to answer them throughout the day, along, not surprisingly, with a support team who manages the campaign.
The question now is to know if this proposal will create a school or not among the rest of the political groups and formations Although other questions remain pending Important issues such as what happens to the phone numbers of citizens who contact politicians and their communication teams. And it could be a good way to get hold of a large database of phone numbers to bombard with political messages in the upcoming election campaigns. Although it is one of the issues for which WhatsApp could block the phone number of these politicians
It is not surprising that this type of practice is carried out through an application as widespread as it is WhatsApp For some time now several years is used to contact associations and institutions in scope social, either to obtain information about safety in sex, or even in more commercial areas, to contact establishments and resolve doubts about services or even reserve a table. Its role in rescuing mountain hikers in different parts of Spain has also been highlighted.
Thus, WhatsApp becomes a very appetizing sweet for all those who want to reach the end user effectively, or at least to open a direct path to communication.However, we will have to be attentive to see if these theoretically useful practices can be managed comfortably in practice, and if they defend the privacy of users. Finally, we must also take into account WhatsApp, who couldclose the ban on the generalization of these practices if the company understands them as advertising.
