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Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.
Mark Twain
Social networking sites have been used by governments to involve citizens in decisions making,
and by civil society to engage people in specific issues. The rise of internet in the early 1990s
has led to the increase in the world networked population. The networked population has greater
access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech and a better ability to
undertake united action. Social media has gained importance with the rise of youths in India. As
they are the one who used internet the most in India. In 2014 general elections social media have
been also used to broaden the political participation by helping citizens to communicate with
their representatives and with each other.
This year social media have been used as an agent for the campaigning of elections through
Facebook, Twitter, Google +. Arguably 2014 elections have been different from the previous
ones; created so much buzz among the youngsters. The BJP and other political parties are
borrowing strategies employed by the Barack Obama in the presidential elections of 2012 and
this year studies shows that Mr. Narendra Modi is the most active and popular personality on
twitter. He is the main ingredient and masala of all news channels, Facebook and many other
sites. The present research paper studies the importance of use and rise of social media in the
arena of Indian politics and its impact on general elections.
voters were added since the last Lok Sabha elections and majority of them are first timers and
youth. This indicates the level of involvement of younsters when it comes to 2014 elections.
India with its impressive growth with the IT exports naturally depended on the power of social
media in challenging the conventional political communication channels with the aim of political
empowerment and inclusion of young voters. To escape the gatekeeping by the media, politicians
and political parties took shelter under social media. The new media has broken media stereotype
and has become a medium for public discourse and has emerged as new power centre knocking
down the mainstream media which wielded power for more than a century.
The use of new media in the Arab Spring uprisings is an example of the contribution of these
new tools to political change. As some analysts writing in mid-2011 put it:
Seeing what has unfolded so far in the Middle East and North Africa, we can say
more than simply that the Internet has changed the way in which political actors
communicate with one another. Since the beginning of 2011, social protests in the
Arab world have cascaded from country to country, largely because digital media
Later on the Criminal Law [Amendment] Bill, 2013 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 19 th
March, 2013, and by the Rajya Sabha on 21st March, 2013. The amendments brought stricter
punishments for the rapists.
Anti-corruption movement
Anna Hazare initiated a Satyagraha (Fasting for a nobel cause) movement for passing a stronger
anti-corruption Lokpal bill in the Indian Parliament. He started hunger strike when the demand
was rejected by Indian government. The movement attracted attention in the media, millions of
supporters inside and outside of India. People showed support through social media such as
Twitter and Facebook. Online Signature Campaigns like avaaz got more than 10 lakh signatures
in just 36 hours. This led Government to seriously consider the introduction of Lokpal bill in
parliament.
The amount of money spent by the parties in these elections was around 30,500 crores which is
second highest in the world after the US Presidential elections for year 2012 and it was around
$7 billion.
As per the LAMAI report 2013 this change for presence of social media could be observed as
every political party participating in 2014 general election has set an 2-5% of its election budget
for spending on social media. The report says that the leading parties Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and Nation congress party has set this it 500 crores and 400 crores respectively.
From very beginning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has the biggest presence in social media.
The BJP started using the social medium even before the 2009 general election .
Mr. Narendra modi who was the Prime Minister candidate of BJP and all other members of BJP
had very high popularity and a reach to general public using social media is as compared to any
other parties. Narendra Modi have highest follower on twitter and Facebook .Aam Aadmi
Party or AAP which is a newly formed political party has quite high popularity as compared to
the two old major parties Congress and BJP .AAP is very active on social media channels. It
was observed that even though AAP and BJP were fighting against each other on social media
but the Congress party realised its importance quite late.
Katie Harbath, Manager for Policy at Facebook, had said that Facebook began working on the
Indian elections during the end of 2013 and stepped up its efforts in March in 2014 when the
elections were notified. Harbath had said that the entire India was discussing the LS elections
and Facebook was really the key place of the conversation that was happening.
According to Adam Sharp, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were turning into Indias first Twitter
elections. It is not just the candidates, even the media and citizens were using the Twitter
platform extensively to discover elections content, converse with others in real time and express
their views. It is estimated that Facebook has 100 million users in India, next only to the United
States. In 2013, India had the third highest Net users in the world. It stands next to the US and
China in terms of users. As per the 2011 Census report, India has more mobile phones than
toilets. It also means that nearly 1.2 billion populations are using cell phones. With the ever
evolving smartphone technology and wide use of the same across India, social media tools have
become easily available to the users at affordable rates. Hence, political parties and candidates
tried their best to exploit the tools for vote gains.
Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Google Plus among others. He has been able to post a lot of publicity
material using the social media tools.
Modi turned into a big canopy under which almost all candidates took shelter or did piggy riding
on his back. The BJPs Prime Minister nominee also used social media to issue rebuttals to media
house when his comments got coloured, twisted or backfired.
Main motto of exercising Social Networking Sites
The main reason of exercising these social networking sites is to motivate the youth to vote in
the coming elections. The peer recommendations play a vital role in influencing youngsters and
this has ensured that a massive number of first time voters will participate in the 2014 elections.
More than 800 million voters will be below the age of 25 according to a survey by the time the
elections arrive. By breaking down politics and making it more engaging and inclusive, they
want to make it easier to exercise our constitutional right. It was launched to get young and new
voters on board through various social media activities.
Changes that takes place in 2014 elections
Congress 163,000
number of Facebook users is more than the margin of victory of the winner in the 2009 polls or
where Facebook users account for over 10 per cent of the voting population.
Social Media Strategy to Win Elections 2014 of Political Party Mainly BJP, Congress And