Post by LEARN BIG DATA ONLINE on May 16, 2014 13:22:32 GMT
SOCIAL MEDIA: INDIA’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION BATTLEGROUND
In the middle of the dead-heat counting of votes on May 16, 2014 Narendra Damodardas Modi sent out a Tweet proclaiming the victory of his party in the 16th Parliamentary Elections of India. The statement has become the most retweeted Tweet from India in Twitter’s history — a spectacular example of the remarkable role social media have played in India’s Parliamentary elections of 2014.
Thanks to the massive political discourse initiated and run by India’s Facebook and Twitter users, the social networks turned into the nation’s newest electoral battleground.
And if media watchers are to be believed, the number of Indian voters on social media is theoretically adequate to swing votes. Figures corroborate the estimate. According to a survey, of India’s 814 million voters, 100 million were first-time voters, the ones mostly active on social media. When translated into votes, this 100 million could have certainly played the deciding part.
Whether social media actually emerges as the swing factor in the 2014 elections and how, will become clearer once the results are copiously deliberated but it certainly made a massive impact on these elections.
While the social media witnessed a swirl of political color like never before, thanks to the young urban Indian electorate, the political parties and their candidates, too, grabbed a lion’s share in the social media warfare.
And just as is the case with the national elections, Narendra Modi swept with numbers here too. A mid-election review of trends by media watchers had put Modi ahead of any other Indian politician on their social media scores based on the sheer impact he had made with his presence on the three major social platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Google. Modi, the Bharatiya Janta Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate, has 3.89 million followers on Twitter and nearly 14 million fans on Facebook. Barack Obama is the only other politician to have more Facebook fans than Modi.
In the 2014 general elections of India, no candidate recognized and utilized the potential of these social media platforms more than Narendra Modi. His party, the BJP, too, has been the frontrunner among Indian political outfits to cash in on social media in running and promoting its election campaign. A Facebook tracker designed to show how much users have been talking about candidates and parties showed more buzz for the BJP over rivals.
But Modi and the BJP are not the only ones with major presence on social media. Scores of other political parties turned to Facebook interviews, mobile crowdsourcing, and hashtag wars on Twitter too – the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leader Arvind Kejriwal being the most prominent after the BJP and Modi.
In its monumental wave of change that it has promised the people of the nation, this election has given us all something to learn. With these elections being the largest in terms scale of operations in the history of the world’s largest democracy, the impact they have had on social media itself is unprecedented. To know more about how you, too, can use social media to your benefit, check out the latest blogs on learn.wiziq.com/ and subscribe!
Until then, keep following this space!