Twitter rolled out new emojis for the 44th Canadian election and highlighted some of its efforts to protect election integrity.
In a blog post, Twitter said it worked with Elections Canada to launch a custom Twitter emoji for the election. During the campaign, people who use select hashtags on Twitter will see the emoji appear alongside the hashtag text. Supported hashtags include:
- #elxn44
- #cdnpoli
- #polcan
- #ItsOurVote
- #CestNotreVote
Additionally, Twitter said that through the first half of 2021, ‘#cdnpoli’ was the most tweeted made-in-Canada hashtag. Further, only #COVID19 had more Canadian mentions among all hashtags in 2021.
Wondering what hashtags to use for the 2021 Canadian federal election? @TwitterCanada has added this custom emoji to #ItsOurVote, #CdnPoli, and #Elxn44. Don’t forget to add them to your tweets. pic.twitter.com/dm7ZRFVrX4
— Elections Canada (@ElectionsCan_E) August 15, 2021
Twitter also took some time to highlight the official accounts of various party leaders and how many followers they had. Twitter says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s account gained over a million followers since September 2019, jumping from 4.5 to 5.6 million. Additionally, Trudeau is the all-time most followed Canadian politician on Twitter.
New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh has 483.6K followers while Conservative leader Erin O’Toole sits at 135.2K.
Twitter also linked to the accounts of Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, Green Part leader Annamie Paul and People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier.
As for election integrity efforts, Twitter says its Civic Integrity Policy targets harmful types of content that impact civic events around the world. In Canada, the census was the most recent civic event to take place under the Twitter policy. The social media company says its policy resulted in a 90 percent positive/neutral sentiment within tweets, while most negative/neutral sentiment was driven by Canadians who wanted the long-form survey over the short form.
Twitter says its partnership with Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections helps inform the platform’s approach to safeguarding conversations. Additionally, Twitter’s policy team continues to work with over a dozen federal government organizations in Canada, along with not-for-profit organizations, to help keep the conversation safe and healthy.
Finally, Twitter said that it will keep rolling out updates as fast as it can during the election. It directed users to follow the Twitter Canada account for the latest information.
Canadians head to the polls on September 20th, 2021.
Source: Twitter
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