Youth trend hashtags in support of farmers

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 4

A number of hashtags supporting the farmers’ protests are trending on social media these days. BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) posted on its page: “It is good that hashtags supporting farmers are trending on social media, but our target should also be clearer in these hashtags.” So, now it has appealed to users to trend #FreeFarmersFromCorporates on various platforms.

The most trending hashtags are #FarmersProtest, #standwithfarmerschallenge, #SpeakUpForFarmers, #iamwithfarmers, #kisanektazindabaad, #tractor2twitter, #isupportfarmers and many others.

The tech-savvy youngsters are posting each and every update from the protest sites at Delhi borders, uploading interviews of leaders and protesters, and are openly sharing their views on each and every development pertaining to the protest on their social media accounts.

Over the past two days, Facebook has been the medium of choice to issue appeals to pro-farmer people to join Twitter and respond to “attacks against the Punjabi farmers’ agitation that are coming mainly through tweets”. Celebrities Kangana Ranaut and Mukesh Khanna, who tweeted against the farmers’ protest, have also faced backlash from the youth.

Moreover, Kisan unions are getting huge response on their social media pages. BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) had around 58k followers in September and 45k people had liked their page, while now, it has 1.15 lakh followers and 81.5k people have liked its page.

The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee’s following has also gone up to 67K from 59K in September. Similarly, BKU (Sidhupur) has seen a hike of followers from 22K to 26.5K.

Meanwhile, Punjabi singers Jazzy B and Amarinder Gill are making appeals to celebrities and common people to come out and support farmers in their fight.

Also, as thousands of farmers took to the roads across the nation, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Twitter account posted a video of a bunch of farmers talking about the benefits of the new agriculture laws.

However, netizens remain disillusioned of these assurances as they continue to show their solidarity, at least in the virtual world, to the farmers.

Farm union leaders claimed that social media was much needed for public outreach. Moreover, youth were using the platform to counter the negative narratives being run by the national media.