Social media: Group of 26 girls struggling to update followers 24/7

Despite odds, PAT team manages to make its presence felt.

ISLAMABAD: Using a laptop placed on a tattered picnic mat nestled between two parked buses, a group of women, the female social media team of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), could be seen at the site of the sit-in uploading photographs of every activity on social media.

Making its way to the only extension plug, intertwined wires floated in a puddle under the bus. The wires snaked through to a generator parked close by which was the only source of electricity provided to the team at the protest site on the Constitutional Avenue.

“The shade between both the buses is favourable,” said 20-year-old Batool Mirza, PAT’s social media head, who had traveled all the way from Karachi to participate in the ‘Inqilab March’.

While most girls were accompanied by their parents and families, Mirza and her sister had to convince their mother for days before they were allowed to become part of a group travelling to the capital.

“My mother is a widow and she worries more about us. We don’t have any family support here, but we feel safe and secure,” she said.

Accompanying 1,000 to 1,200 people on a train from Karachi to Lahore, she said she left her home on August 1.  Mirza said that while the PAT boys had access to electricity while the girls had to struggle. “They always get access before us, they would also look out for us,” she said.

A total of 26 young girls could be seen actively engaging people on the social media through uploading latest pictures the PAT’s activities. They stare at their screens for seven to eight hours in shifts updating followers about the party leader’s position on the demands he has placed before the government.

“The stop in Lahore was challenging,” she said. The girls had to travel to Minhaj-ul-Quran’s bureau laboratory to get internet access. “We found it extremely difficult to move around with our gadgets but we had to keep updating out social media page,” she said.

“The stoppage at Aabpara was a bigger challenge,” she said, explaining that the cellular network jammers active in the area also denied them access to the internet. She said that PAT girls had to travel to nearby hotels to go online.

“There were times when we just sat under scorching sun on the footpath just to update our social media pages,” she said with an encouraging laugh. “When it rained we were struggling to protect our laptops and chargers with extra veils and plastic sheets,” she said.

Today, they were camping in a bus parked opposite a huge crowd sprawled across the parliament.  “This bus is located at the only place where we can get signals. All of us girls are here with our gadgets, updating Dr Qadri’s speech and giving out other updates from the ground,” she said.

Mirza feels that the media was not reporting everything, therefore, there was a need for an active social media campaign that takes the message beyond borders and reaches out to the international community. “We have an increasing number of international followers as well who want to know what’s happening in the country,” she said.

Mirza feels that their physical presence was a lot more than social media presence and could not match with other competitors, but that was not what they were aiming for either.

“I know people have been drawing comparison of our social media presence with that of others, but we have more physical presence on the ground than others,” she said in an indirect reference to the PTI, which has been staging a sit-in where attendance swells in the evening and fades during the day.

Starting with a 100 followers, Mirza has managed to add 100 new followers to her page in the last ten days.

“Whenever I feel weak, I think of the street children and my country. They are the reason I am here. It just pushes me to sit here for as long as I have to,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2014.