Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2021: Dravidian Politics at Crossroads
The elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly provide an opportunity to reassess the fault lines in the caste, religious and ethno-geographical identities in the state and their significance in electoral politics.
Elections to the legislative assembly of Tamil Nadu were held in a single phase on 6 April 2021 with a voter turnout of 72.78%. With the counting of votes scheduled to take place on 2 May 2021, the electoral prospects of various parties and alliances are in the fray.
Some of the key pre-poll formations for the 2021 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu include:
i. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and including S Ramadoss’s Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and others;
Privacy and Manipulation: How Social Media Has Affected Political Discourse
As our interactions with social media and messaging apps become more and more pervasive, does our data remain private or can it be used by algorithms to tailor and manipulate our online experience?
The social media messaging application WhatsApp recently updated its privacy policy. WhatsApp has tried to assure users that it cannot read or listen to personal conversations and has even delayed the implementation of the new policy. Yet, concerns have been raised about the potential for it sharing user data with parent company Facebook. While the app uses end-to-end encryption for messages and will continue to do so with the new privacy update, it already shares user data, such as about location, contacts, usage and identifiers, with Facebook. Therefore, experts have explained that the key difference in the new policy relates to how users engage in “business interactions.”