GUWAHATI: On 11th April 2019, the world’s largest democracy will go for election to decide the country’s fate for the next five years. Around 820 million voters, of which 15 million are young voters between the ages of 18 and 19, will exercise their franchise.
With over 55 crore people having access to the internet, political parties are aggressively using social media in their campaigns. 30 crore people are using Facebook, 20 crore are WhatsApp users and 3.4 crore users are on Twitter. The number of users on social media has doubled since the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Unlike 2014 where traditional television media dominated the scene, in 2019 social media will play a crucial role in the upcoming elections. With the accessibility to internet becoming easy among the masses, political parties are leaving no stone unturned to gain dominance on the internet with their virtual campaigns.
Now every political party has a page on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter handles which carry regular updates by dedicated IT cell teams handling their pages at different platforms. It all started during the 2014 general election by the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the chief Minister of Gujarat, when he used social media extensively to reach out to the people - especially young voters - which actually were greatly instrumental in propelling the BJP to power.
PM Modi’s Twitter handle has been active since 2009 and had about 40 lakh followers then. Now, it stands at 4.63 crore strong followers. Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, joined the social media turf a little late back in 2015 and now has over 88 lakh followers. On Facebook alone, Prime Minister Modi has around 4.3 crore followers and Rahul Gandhi with 25 lakh followers.
With the election environment gaining momentum, thousands of volunteers are being trained in data analytics and communication through digital platforms as parties, including Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), are warming up for the battle ahead.
The BJP was the first to realise the potential of social media and is still running their digital space with a robust organisation ready to meet the opposition.
Congress, which is the biggest opposition to the ruling BJP, is gearing up intensively after learning its lesson from 2014 general elections and is scaling up its presence in the virtual world to the challenge the BJP this time.
Virtual world challenges
Apart from the online campaign and all the glitz, challenges in the online world remain. Social media has been influencing elections around the world; the recent example can be that of the US elections in 2016, when Russia was accused of influencing the election using covert means by penetrating computer systems in the United States.
India, on the other hand, having a population over a billion, has internal challenges when it comes to social media monitoring and tackling misuse.
The challenge that needs to be checked in the country are the unlawful campaigns and fake news which has plagued the country in recent times resulting in much misinformation. Due to easy access to the virtual world negative and fake news are doing rounds exponentially.
To tackle the growing influence of such activities, the Election Commission of India has issued guidelines for political parties. Now the candidates will have to furnish the details of their social media accounts at the time of filling their nominations and all political advertisements on social media will need pre-certification.
Further, the chief election commissioner, Sunil Arora, has asked Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to verify all the political advertisements coming from various political parties. A grievance officer has also been appointed to take complaints related to these advertisements on all social media platforms. The Election Commission has also directed big IT companies in the country to take action against hate speeches.
The Election Commission, last year, launched an app called cVigil. The app will help citizens report any violations of the moral code of conduct and any malpractices. National, as well as regional political parties and leaders, can no longer release political advertisements on social media without the pre-certification from monitoring committees.
Political parties now will have to adhere to the 48-hour “silence period” online as well. This would warrant pulling down existing ads from social media. To tackle trolls the Election Commission has said that political parties cannot make memes and trolls of political leaders but can criticise their policies and past records.
Now, how effective will these measures help the Election Commission to tackle the misuse of social media and how effectively a free and fair election is conducted for the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha Elections remains to be seen.