ISTANBUL
In Turkey 85 percent of media outlets got results of Sunday's local elections from Anadolu Agency (AA), who had 1,500 in the field and 95,000 data providers covering the elections under its Local Elections 2014 Project.
After months of broadcast tests to deliver the elections results in the fastest and most accurate way the agency’s election results coverage made its way onto live television programs, newspapers, radio and websites. Political parties got the election results from Anadolu Agency, as well.
Breaking a record in the amount of news, photographs and video provided, Anadolu Agency services provided 3,200 news items, 8,500 photographs and 600 video on election day.
Furthermore, international media also received Turkey’s local election results from the agency, as the coverage was broadcast in six languages.
- AA’s election results on the international media
Anadolu Agency’s special website “aasecim.com” that published detailed maps and graphics of the election areas was visited 737,784 times. While Turkish citizens got the election results of their district from agency’s the website. The page view exceeded 109 million.
Hundreds of domestic and foreign websites, including Google, based their local election stories on the agency’s election results.
The number of visitors to Anadolu Agency’s official website rose to over 1 million hits from 45,000. The number of visitors on the instant system reached a record high with over 2.5 million page views. Turkey’s three biggest GSM companies provided their users with the agency’s local elections results via SMS.
- Record number of photos and video footage
Anadolu Agency instantly published the photographs and personal backgrounds of the winning candidates and began sharing the "Candidate Databank" with its subscribers on March 26, in order to inform them in the run-up to the polls.
The agency published 2,015 photographs of the candidate mayors a day on average in March, and reached a peak of 4,334 prior to the elections.
On the day of the local elections, Anadolu Agency subscribers could receive 4,176 photos including those with subtitles in foreign languages, which made 8,510 photos of the candidates.
Another record came with the number of news and video footage, which reached 3,200 and 600 respectively on the day of local elections.
- AA shared the election results with local newspapers
The agency shared the results of Sunday's local elections with some local newspapers and websites for free. They could use the election data of Anadolu Agency including maps and graphics via "http://aasecim.com", where the results were announced second by second.
As part of the ‘Local Elections 2014’ project, Anadolu Local Broadcasting Platform held a special broadcasting for its subscribers in addition to the common broadcasting with Kral FM, which all could be used by many local TV channels and radio stations.
Maps and charts in "aasecim.com" were instantly shared during the common broadcasting with Kral FM and Kral TV, while the results were evaluated in the broadcast of Anadolu Local Broadcasting Platform.
- AA faced cyber-attacks when broadcasting the results
All the systems of the agency faced a number of cyber-attacks during the broadcasting of the local election results. Over 1 billion attacks were recorded to "aasecim.com" which supplied the polling data accompanied by maps and charts.
The website, however, could not be deactivated despite night long attacks from RedHack. Malfunctions of the systems were successfully handled by the agency's experienced team of information and communication technology.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
