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Campaign goes virtual: Millions spent on social media ads
Sri Lankan political candidates have spent up to US$ 234,692 (more than Rs 43.5mn) on 15,860 election-related publicity on Facebook and its other platforms including Instagram since nominations were handed over, according to the social media site’s Ad Library which publishes expenditure details of advertisement that appear on user timelines.
This amount had been spent by Wednesday. It was an increase of nearly 300 percent when compared to the amount recorded on July 5, by which time nearly US$ 60,000 (Rs 11.4mn) had been spent on some 4,808 social media election advertisements by leading politicians and well-funded candidates.
Ad Library contains information about advertisements on politics, elections and social issues. There has been a spike in social and electronic media use in Sri Lanka amidst health regulations spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and the strict implementation of laws by the Election Commission.
On Facebook, Sri Lanka’s best-known social media site with 6.2 million active users, candidates pay around US$ 100 (Rs 18,500) to simply boost their own pages or around US$ 400 (Rs 74,200) to target users in a specific geographical location of the country with tailored advertisements.
There was a 291 percent increase in expenditure in just two weeks, boosted by political advertisements. The highest total was spent in the Western Province–US$ 106,804 (Rs 19.8mn)–on Facebook advertisements while the North Central Province recorded the lowest sum at USD 4,745 (Rs 881,060) in the past 30 days.
Meanwhile, the Election Campaign Cost Monitoring Unit of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) which keeps a tab on social media sites in addition to electronic and print media said it recorded Rs 514 million spent on election campaign activities. The election watchdog predicted that political campaigning on social media would increase significantly in the final race towards the finish.
CMEV National Coordinator Manjula Gajanayake said most of the 208 former legislators who were seeking to return to Parliament and some other well-funded candidates were spending millions during the past few weeks across multiple platforms.
He said they were also monitoring hundreds of politically biased gossip websites that were carrying out an aggressive campaign on behalf of candidates.
“More than 90 percent of those websites are funded by the candidates and engaged in election campaigning openly,” he observed. “The administrators of these websites behave like spin doctors planting positive stories about their respective funding candidates while spreading false reports and fake news about other candidates for political gains.”