If you’re on social media, you know that political parties have discovered that there’s no better place than Twitter and facebook to have a direct conversation with voters. Sure it’s only those voters with access to the internet, but that’s a large number of us. Rallies and TV interviews be damned, if you want to know the mood of the middle class nation, social media is the place to be. Realising this, political parties have set up teams which are constantly monitoring social media – responding to people, often trolling them, sometimes cajoling them. We decided to speak to the three political parties that hog media space and ask them how they manage their presence on social media, choose the people who are part of their social media cell and whether they feel social media will make a difference to their party’s performance in the elections.

We tried to speak to the Congress IT cell, but even after two weeks we have received no response. We would have sent a registered letter, but since we were talking about social media we wanted to keep the discussion online. The Bharatiya Janata Party which is often blamed for trolling its detractors and having a veritable army on social media, was far more forthcoming, and was kind enough to take forward the “army” analogy for us. As was Aam Aadmi Party’s IT head, Ankit Lal.

Internal Structures

Compared to the Congress, BJP has always been ahead of the techno curve. They were the ones to establish a separate IT ministry in 1999, and used a voicemail service for campaigning (remember receiving a call where a voice said “Main Atal Bihari Vajpayee bol raha hun?” -This is Atal Bihari Vajpayee speaking). Newslaundry spoke to Vinit Goenka, co-convenor of BJP’s IT cell about their social media presence. “At the ground level, we are divided into three teams that are headed by Arvind Gupta, Head of IT cell, BJP”.

According to Goenka, the first team, led by Sanjeev Singh, is responsible for infrastructure, which includes handling all websites, designing, structuring, managing wifi networks, audio bridges etc.  The second team, led by Amresh K, manages social media – which includes all activities relating to facebook, Twitter.  Amresh also heads the political campaigns for Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Puducherry. The third person who forms the crucial part of IT cells is Vinit Goenka, who looks after the “Sangathan” and e-governance issues. Referring to the role of social media, Goenka says “humari zimeddari hai ki in shastron ka istemaal yuddh ke baad kaise karna hai” (We will be responsible for using these weapons of war after the war is over.). The war analogy isn’t incidental, we feel.

BJP’s increasing hold on social networking sites has not gone unnoticed by other parties. Speaking of AAP’s social media presence, Ankit Lal, the 29-year-old who heads the AAP IT Cell says, “Social media will definitely affect the overall outcome of these elections. We observed the BJP style of functioning very closely. We have unpaid volunteers out of which 4 are full-time. Many part-time volunteers are also involved. These volunteers are from various sectors like engineers, doctors and even students. We have individual teams to handle different jobs. But the final decisions are taken by the senior members and leaders of the party. For the party’s Twitter handle we have 3 people”.

The PPT Model

BJP’s Goenka says their main objective is to reach out to both supporters and detractors of the party. They follow what he calls the PPT model.  PPT stands for People, Process and Technology, in that order. “Whenever we meet with our cadre, the first question is whether they have an account on facebook or Twitter. If the answer is negative, we ask them to go out of the room and get this done”.  At the beginner’s level, IT cell cadre members are made to read, discuss and practise communicating through different mediums.

The next step is the dissemination of information. Communication takes place between “Party to Partymen” and “Party to Workers”. The dissemination of information by party workers takes place through five teams. One team only highlights the positive developments in BJP-ruled states. The second team monitors the mistakes/gaffes committed by their rivals, especially the Congress, within their own government. The third team is responsible for bringing any negative information to the notice of spokespersons who counter it in the public domain. (Now we know who’s been keeping a tab on our Newslaundry editors.) The fourth team is responsible for magnifying positive information that has been identified by a “kaaryakarta” a.k.a. a BJP member. The fifth team is the one which chooses its own targets. “Let’s suppose, someone wants to monitor the activities of Rahul Gandhi, he is free to bring out information in form of graphics, article or pictures”.

The other strategy is to reach out to famous people with thousands of followers on facebook and Twitter.  People with more than a lakh followers on social media and a known leaning towards the BJP were even invited to the National Council Meeting to be formally inducted into the social media “army”. According to Amresh, “The strategy is not to waste our resources in building the structure from scratch but to work smartly”.

AAP’s Ankit Lal says that their “target is to push pictures and videos in almost real-time on social media. The brief is to capture any moment which the person taking the photo thinks is something others would be interested in seeing, The more magical the moment, the more is the chance of it going viral. The primary responsibilities are assigned to all the members of the team”.

According to Goenka, all office bearers have to take permission from higher officials in the party before sharing any information in cyberspace. “Even if I write an article, I get it checked to the last punctuation mark”.

What about the trolls?

Vinit Goenka says, “There are different kinds of supporters. There are those who are office bearers who are always in contact with top leaders and spokespersons. Then, there are well-wishers who may or may not be in contact with our leaders but they support us. The third is the supporter who has severe angst against the Congress and he may be involved in something that is called ‘unparliamentary’. He’s the one with the right intentions but wrong directions. The fourth is the troll who can be abusive. He’s the one with the right direction but wrong intentions”. According to Goenka, they don’t hesitate in taking action against abusive supporters.

However, for all its planning and methodology, it’s not as if BJP’s online journey has been a smooth ride. One of the biggest faux pas being the announcement by BJP’s online army publicised this.

 Later, Wikileaks clarified,

Goenka didn’t seem amused when he was questioned about the embarrassing episode.  “I had a word with Priti Gandhi, she clarified that it was just an action in haste. It often happens that we retweet something without verifying the authenticity of data”.  Goenka encapsulates the degree of damage done by such mistakes in a famous couplet of Ghalib – “lamhon ne khata ki thi sadiyon ne saja paai” (Momentary mistakes bring eternal punishments). He adds, “We have moral codes of conduct for our party workers. It hurts the party and the leaders”.

Since we were on the topic of incorrect tweets, we asked Goenka about BJP announcing a boycott of NDTV because the channel posted an inaccurate tweet which it attributed to BJP’s Sushma Swaraj. “NDTV is a part of a big family. You may fight with your siblings in the morning, sulk throughout the day, but you are back together on the dining table”. To celebrate this thought, here’s a song you can sing along to:

Will BJP support bans on social media and uphold Section 66A of the IT Act? Goenka refused to provide a direct answer. “This is something that shall be decided on the floor of house”.

He also pleads helplessness on keeping track of such a large number of supporters and admirers of the party. Does AAP indulge in any fact-checking before it makes a post on social media? Ankit Lal says, “First of all we check content related to AAP that is being shared online. If we are replying to someone, we always have proof for our reply and counter. Until and unless we have concrete evidence we never reply or counter people on social media”.

Speaking on trolls, Ankita Gaba, founder of SocialSamosa.com says, “With the use of monitoring tools, for example Konnect Social that is powering our tracker, parties can track keywords like hate, dislike, kill, die. They can even track negative hashtags such as #FekuExpress  #AAPDrama etc and decide their course of action to counter attack that”.

Neither Goenka nor Amresh endorsed journalists being targeted and abused on social media, although they both believe that mainstream media is biased against Modi.

Fake Likes, Followers, Finance

What has worked as a dampener on the impact of BJP’s online campaign are allegations that a large part of BJP’s online presence is buffered by the party buying fake followers and fake likes. According to a report by Centre of Media Studies, which tracks election spending, India’s total spending on campaign has been around Rs 30,000 crore. Another report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) states that political parties set aside around 2 to 5 per cent of their election budgets for social media. According to media reports, the total spending on social media for Congress and BJP boils down to Rs 500 Crore and Rs 400 Crore, respectively.

It’s not just BJP, but also AAP which feels that online follower counts aren’t manipulated.  Ankit Lal, Head IT cell of AAP explains, “Twitter and Facebook are different mediums. It is easy to get fake facebook likes but you can’t have fake followers on Twitter. I, being a social media researcher, realised that the methodology of calculating fake followers on Twitter is flawed. Ankita Gaba agrees that due to the evolving nature of online tools no data is accurate. “The entire social media world is juggling with finding the right metrics and tools. All analytic tools are evolving. So no tool will be accurate in identifying the fake follower count”. She does concede that it is not difficult to buy fake likes and Twitter followers.

Amresh K says, “We don’t support such practices at all. When, we are in such a good position in the elections, why would we promote such practices?  In fact, in our National Executive meet, strict guidelines were issued to the office bearers in this regard”.

AAP vs BJP- Twitter vs Facebook- Who has the upper hand?

According to Ankit Lal, “as far as Twitter is concerned, AAP has the upper hand over BJP and Congress”. But what do the numbers show?

The technical term used for auditing activity on social media is called “Sentiment Analysis”. This is the latest data released by Social Samosa.

The statistics suggest that the AAP is far ahead of both BJP and Congress on Twitter. But when it comes to the number of fans on facebook, BJP takes the lead. Ankita Gaba believes that the numbers reflect the way the political campaigns of each party have played out. In case of BJP she says, “Narendra Modi has been systematically put in the minds of people calling him the next PM in all their communications. People have started getting attached to that brand”.

Explaining AAP’s presence on social media, Ankit Lal says, “Our USP is that we are open to volunteer made graphics and videos and that we are pushing content from ground in almost real time which others have failed to do. Also, ours is a totally volunteer-driven team, thus the passion involved is much higher. It is difficult for any paid PR or social media marketing agency to match the enthusiasm of volunteers”.

Keeping with party tradition, Vinit Goenka explains BJP’s social media presence with a Hindu analogy. “Before crossing the sea while marching towards Lanka, Lord Hanuman was made to realise his own strengths by Jambavan. We have done the same thing with this medium. Once Jambavan said it to Hanuman, then Swami Vivekanand said this to his countrymen and now Modiji said to all his supporters ‘Stop not till the goal is reached’. The only goal at this moment is to see Modiji as next PM of this country”.

Now that we know what the goal is, we can sit back and watch which party will score their goal and which one will score a self-goal. At least virtually.

Reported by Shashank Pandey and Rohit Shrivastava