India’s first social media election

If Barack Obama was described by a section of the US media as the first social media president, whoever wins the 2014 general elections in India could well earn the moniker of being the first social media prime minister this country has seen. It would be no exaggeration to say that the 2014 elections are well and truly India’s first big social media election, inspired in no small way by the manner in which Obama successfully tapping into the power of social networks to win the 2008 US presidential election. An indication of the influence social media wields can be had from the fact that for the first time in India, the Election Commission will monitor social media spends of the candidates. One possible reason for the exponential rise in the use of social media is that an estimated 1.79 lakh new young voters would exercise their franchise on an average in each parliamentary constituency, as per the latest Election Commission data. (However, it needs to be pointed out here that internet penetration is not uniform throughout the country; therefore, social media would have an influence only in certain pockets.)

I recall reading a New York Times article that published the following quote explaining the phenomenon: “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. [Franklin D Roosevelt] used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. [John F Kennedy] was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the web for raising money[.] But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organise to do the work.” That was in 2008. Today, social media has become ubiquitous in India and around the world. So much so that according to a study carried out by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IRIS Knowledge Foundation, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to influence at least 160 Lok Sabha constituencies out of 543 during the next general elections. According to some estimates, the number of social media users in India can be expected to rise exponentially by the middle of this year to several tens of million; it may not be much in absolute terms but when seen in the context of the reach of social media and its power of exponential influence it could make all the difference between winning and losing.

Sample the following statistics:

·      The internet population in India is among the largest in the world;

·      In India 30 new internet users are added every minute and a new Facebook user every second; and

·      Nearly half of all internet users in India use social media to keep themselves abreast of political developments.

These statistics only go to prove that there is a paradigm shift unfolding in the way elections are fought and political parties engage voters. Already we are seeing candidates and political parties alike experimenting with Google Hangouts, live broadcasts, audio-visual presentations on YouTube and online debates, besides making use of Facebook and Twitter. (The advent of social media in Indian election campaigns is not the only innovation going around. This election has also seen the entry of American-style “primaries” and “town hall” meetings to select candidates and engage with voters, respectively.)