As India enters election mode, social media has become one of many platforms where possible prime ministerial candidates are being scrutinized.
On top of the list are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who recently acquired the Twitter monikers #Pappu (“naïve”) 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 skeptical. “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 recognize 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 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 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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