The Asian Age

Nirmala stresses on making social media ‘ toxic- free’

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Bengaluru, Sept. 30: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday stressed the need to keep the social media “toxic- free” to build an intelligen­t and smart narrative for the country to progress fast.

“We should be the pioneers to make that place toxic- free. It should be an engagement forum, but without bitterness, toxicity, negativity,” said Mrs Sitharaman, addressing the sixth Social Media Conclave, organised by an NGO — Namaste India. BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav was also present on the occasion.

Mrs Sitharaman disagreed with the term “warriors” or “yoddhas” for those propagatin­g government programmes on social media platforms and said she preferred to call them architects as they improved the ambience and beautified the surroundin­gs. “Architects do wonderful things to make our ambience, ecosystem better. They bring in more trees. I think, as architects of the social media, we should bring in more culture in the wonderful, technology­based, interactio­n fora — whether it is Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook, and a lot more. We communicat­e better by bringing in a lot of facts,” she said.

The defence minister reminded the audience that there were certain virtues India held for generation­s, which were missing today. “All of us are here for a common cause. We want a better India. All of us have got some exposure to how civic lives can be better, our individual lives can be better — in rural or urban India,” she said.

Mrs Sitharaman said that there should be an intelligen­t and smart narrative on the social media platforms. — PTI

 ??  ?? Nirmala Sitharaman
Nirmala Sitharaman

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