BBC News India is using WhatsApp and WeChat to distribute and crowdsource election coverage

The BBC is using private mobile messaging apps to engage with their audience in India around this year’s presidential elections. The BBC first used WhatsApp in the Philippines for coverage of Typhoon Haiyan last year. “One of the things we realized is we’re reaching a very broad demographic and in certain parts of the world the people who use WhatsApp are actually quite poor,” said Trushar Barot, assistant editor of the BBC’s UGC and social media hub. “That’s a demographic that we don’t generally tend to reach through traditional social media.” The BBC first used WhatsApp in the Philippines for coverage of Typhoon Haiyan last year.