Did you know that reading, watching, or listening to negative news is one of the leading causes of stress among readers?

Research suggests people who consume negative news regularly tend to have less trust in authorities, lower evaluations of other people and communities, and more psychological problems. As a responsible media house of the country, Jagran New Media (JNM) believes in constructive journalism and, through that, it contributes to nation-building. 

In early 2020 when the world was hit by one of the worst pandemics in history, much of the world was covered by a cloud of negativity. Yet a small ray of hope emerged in the form of the campaign, which highlighted the positivity among the people of India. 

We Indians are known for our entrepreneurship and innovation, be it in the field of education, technology, automobile, or research. In India, there are unmatched examples of social harmony inspired by the “never say never” attitude. JNM launched the #PositiveIndia campaign to spotlight positive stories about the people involved in nation-building in all sectors/categories of our society. We focused on the noble souls who were maintaining the secular fabric of Indian society despite all odds.

Creating the campaign

A lot of thinking went into reaching out to the right people who were working relentlessly to uplift society and helping people survive the difficult phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. Throughout this Twitter-first campaign, a lot of unknown faces were discovered who were doing their bit by putting the country first.

We always hear it’s the soldier for whom the country comes first, but we saw that we have an internal army of people who are not at the frontline but are working as the frontline workers.

People like:

Srijana Gummalla, an IAS officer from Andhra Pradesh who returned to work within a month of having her baby. She returned to work and took charge as the state was going through an outbreak of COVID-19. She was seen at work with her 1-month-old baby, fulfilling both the responsibility of an ideal officer and that of a mother.

Fitness Guru Mickey Mehta reached out to people through Twitter to help them overcome anxiety and push them toward the road to recovery. He conducted online sessions for people who were going through a tough phase, as people were confined indoors which was also building up the mental pressure as people were not used to such conditions. 

Anand Kumar, an educator best known for his Super30 programme, took the digital route to reach out to students and help them continue their studies. To lighten the mood, he posted questions in the form of a quiz on his Twitter timeline and asked students to answer them. Students connect with him easily and anything coming directly from their mentor was a big boost to the kids. That also helped them direct their energy toward the right channel.

A chain reaction

#PositiveIndia was not just confined to the metro cities; youngsters from rural areas surprised everyone by forming a chain reaction and connecting over 100 volunteers in just a span of two days and creating a list of people who will be provided the basic rations to survive the first lockdown. As routine work stopped, people who were dependent on the daily wages were impacted badly, and these young social warriors took things on them and helped these people with free rations.

We got a tremendous response from people and the campaign was appreciated by our followers on not just our Twitter pages — it also was widely reshared across the platforms. As it was a Twitter-first campaign, we captured over 1.25 million impressions on Twitter, over 55,550 engagement through tweets, likes, shares, and retweets.

Apart from our Twitter followers, this campaign was widely appreciated by the Health Ministry, which shared information through their Twitter handles by retweeting our stories, amplifying the reach of this campaign.