As India enters election mode, social media has become one of many platforms where possible prime ministerial candidates are being scrutinised.
On top of the list are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who recently acquired the Twitter monikers #Pappu ("naΓ―ve") and #Feku ("boastful"), respectively, following a string of public appearances observers saw as evidence they will be leading their respective parties in the upcoming national election.
A recent study found that social media could influence the electoral outcome in as many as 160 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. (These are constituencies where 10% of the voting population uses Facebook, or where the number of Facebook users is higher than the winning candidate's margin of victory at the last election.)
"No contestant can afford to ignore social media in the next Lok Sabha elections," argued the study, put together by IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a Mumbai-based research group, and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body.
Others are more sceptical. "The study assumes that users will behave homogenously, which isn't true," says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.
While calling the study's findings "ambitious," Mr. Abraham said it was important to recognise the political power of Facebook, which could be used as a social platform but also to "plan a revolution."
But India's Internet penetration is low: only 150 million people out of a population of 1.2 billion go online, according to the IRIS-IAMAI study. The study estimates the number of social media users in the country is around 62 million, and that it may increase up to 80 million by the time of national elections, which have to happen by May 2014.
Indian political parties have started wising up to the power of online campaigning. Ahead of state elections in Uttar Pradesh last year, for instance, parties including the winning Samajwadi Party, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party turned to social media ranging from Facebook to YouTube as well as to blogs and smartphone apps to promote their candidates and their agenda.
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{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background The article was published ahead of the 2014 Indian general election, which became one of the most social-media-intensive election campaigns in Indian history. Narendra Modi and the BJP made particularly aggressive use of platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a strategy that is widely credited as one factor in their landslide victory. The IRIS-IAMAI study cited in the piece underestimated eventual social media growth β by the time of the election in May 2014, the number of Indian social media users had grown well beyond the 80 million projection. Sunil Abraham's scepticism about the homogeneity assumption was a methodologically sound critique. The study's constituency-level analysis treated all Facebook users as equally likely to be influenced and to vote, which did not account for differences in caste, class, language, rural-urban divides or the strong role of ground-level political mobilisation that has historically dominated Indian electoral politics. The 2014 election settled the broader question decisively β social media did matter, but primarily as a tool of political communication and fundraising rather than as a direct vote-swinger in the mechanical sense the IRIS-IAMAI study suggested. ## External Link - [Read on The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-IRTB-18450) (Subscription required)