When Shashi Tharoor tweeted his now infamous cattle class and holy cow message the first reaction of many was to wonder what tweeting was. Considering what befell Tharoor following the tweet, the then Bharatiya Janata Party President Venkaiah Naidu warned “too much tweeting can lead to quitting”.

We’ve come a long way since then.

The well-reported success of US President Barack Obama’s campaign made politicians across the world wake up to its potential. IRIS Knowledge Foundation (IKF) and Internet and Mobile Association of India’s report that the fortunes of contestants in 150 Lok Sabha constituencies could be determined by Facebook strengthened this perception. A sure indication of the attraction of this medium is the speed with which a large number of Indian politicians from all spectrums have joined the virtual bandwagon. Omar Abdullah to Arun Jaitley to Lalu Prasad Yadav are all online. Not surprisingly, likes or followings of a leader are flaunted as an indication of popularity. Parties are conducting workshops to teach everyone how to improve engagement on websites such as facebook and Twitter. Professional help is being sought to woo the virtual citizens. Without a doubt a virtual battle is on us and a battalion of party foot soldiers are slugging it out. The Feku v/s Pappu conversation on Twitter, which is considered by many to be India’s biggest hashtag battle, managed to get people riveted to the virtual world of social media.

The hashtags war is real and every effort is being made to convey the messages. For instance, before the Delhi elections, by the evening of December 4, 2013 the #SheilaFirSe gave way to #RIPCongress. Hashtags with AAP and BJP in them slugged it out. Even the Election Commission has recognised the importance of new media by asking candidates to declare their accounts and online spending.

Is social media a strong enough tool to influence votes that the EC is paying attention to it?

As of 2014, over 93 million people are on facebook and 33 million on Twitter. As per data available:

• India’s Internet Population is the third largest in the world

• India adds a new internet user every two seconds

• A new Facebook user sign up in India every second.

• 1,250 Indians visit Youtube every single minute

• Indian Netizens spend an average of 8 hours everyday on the internet.

• 1 in 4 online minutes in India is spent on social networking sites.

A Pew research study in December, 2012 established that nearly 45% of Indian web users connect on social media to discuss politics. This spurt in political interest in social media has spurred on a mini industry of virtual world analysts. Careers – academic, governmental, journalistic, etc – are being built by celebrating the political potential of new and social media technologies or by tearing it apart. Without rigorous research designs or rich data, partisans of all viewpoints turn to anecdotal evidence and intuition. Cyber-optimists believe that social media is going to play a decisive role and is going to create almost perfect participatory election. Cyber-pessimists have brushed aside the role of social media as nothing more than background noise.

For instance, Kunal Singh in his article, You Can’t Vote It Forward, suggests that social media is unlikely to make a serious dent in the voting patterns of people. To arrive at this conclusion, he begins with the questionable assumption that people won’t like politicians from different parties. While it is true that social media can create an echo chamber where people tend to prefer “people like themselves”, there is no evidence to suggest that there is no overlap by followers.

Further, the assumption that likes can be taken as an indication of political engagement is at the least, extremely simplistic. Any mouse-happy person can click on likes or follow a candidate and never return to the person or party’s page. The open secret that many celebrities purchase “likes” makes the validity suspect. A far better indication of engagement is the data on how many users/followers are talking about a person or party.

Figure 1 depicts how many people on facebook are talking about the three parties that have been referred to in the article – as of March 23, 2014. This data, though, only gives an indication of popularity which does not necessarily translate into electoral success.

Also, the impact of social media presence cannot be measured purely on the basis of how many people follow a person. Social media allows information and opinions to travel across networks and reach out to a vast audience. A brilliant instance of this is when Keith Urbahn, chief of staff in the office of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found out about the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and tweeted the news to his mere 1,016 followers. According to experts the “rate at which Keith’s message spread was staggering”. Research has confirmed that “follower count” is not the most important measure of influence. An analysis of 1.7 billion tweets from 54 million users found that the most-followed people on Twitter were not the most influential in terms of getting retweeted or mentioned in tweets.

Sysomos’ calculation of influence, called an authority ranking, was based on several factors, including these characteristics: number of followers, frequency of updates, and retweets. By this measure by Sysomos, Obama has less influence than The New York Times, even though the news organisation has far fewer followers than the president.

What is to be noted as well is that social media acts as a medium to promote and highlight offline activities. For instance, during the campaign period in Delhi there was a noticeable increase in the activities on Twitter when significant things were happening offline. In the case of AAP, there was a flurry of activities on social media when their manifesto was released and when their sting operation details were made public. In the case of BJP it was when Narendra Modi visited Delhi to campaign for the candidates contesting the Legislative Assembly.

Figure 2 depicts the fluctuations in the Twitter world. This shows that while social media might have not been used for encouraging dialogue as might have been expected, it was still being used to send out messages.

Without really getting into the question of first-time voters, it’s important to point out that 25,000 voters can be a game changer in many constituencies. For instance, the margin between winning and losing in many constituencies was much less than that.

Figure 3 provides an overview of some of the constituencies labeled as high impact area by IRIS study.

In absolute terms the difference between who won and lost was way less than the 25,000 that the author dismisses.  In an election where every vote counts and every seat counts every method to canvass will also count.

Table 1 Margin of victory in Select Constituencies in 2009

It is owing to this that every vote counts – and a party which can convert online supporters into offline votes on election day will be at a significant advantage. What will count in 2014 will be that in comparison to 2009 elections, over 110 million prospective voters are on facebook and Twitter for the first time. Hence, the furious attempts to win them over.

No one knows which side the wind will blow as this is uncharted terrain and could provide inputs for the future. Without a doubt social media provides unmediated access but the question that remains unanswered is if political parties and contestants are agile enough to take advantage of it? Our analysis of its use during the Delhi election held in 2013 is that they have not yet learned to tap the potential. By and large, social media has been used to broadcast information rather than communicate with the people.

While efforts are being made to emulate what Barack Obama managed, even a cursory look at the report “Inside the Cave” will show that our leaders and political parties still have miles to go. Also, questions are bound to be asked if such presidential style of politics in a parliamentary system will work. It is precisely because of these reasons that the 2014 election is going to a dress rehearsal to the 2019 election which might well be the internet-driven elections.  All this needs more rigorous analysis and not some anecdotal studies based on unsubstantiated assumptions.

References:

IRIS Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India, Social Media and Lok Sabha Election, 2013. http://www.esocialsciences.org/General/A2013412184534_19.pdf

Inside the Cave Obama’s Digital Campaign http://enga.ge/download/Inside%20the%20Cave.pdf

Parmelee, John H and Bichard, Shannon, Politics and Twitter Revolution, Lexington Books, Maryland, 2012.

Raman, Kannamma and Parthasarathy, Ashwin, “Delhi poll: social media potential high, readiness poor”, The Hoot, http://thehoot.org/web/Delhipollsocialmediapotentialhighreadinesspoor/7164-1-1-9-true.html

Raman, Kannamma and Parthasarathy, Ashwin, “Minimal Presence, Minimal Use”, The Hoot, http://thehoot.org/web/Minimalpresenceminimaluse/7227-1-1-9-true.html

We are Social, Social, Digital and Mobile in India, 2012, http://wearesocial.net/tag/india/