With the DUSU elections fast approaching, student parties are leaving no stone unturned in an attempt to woo their voters. From campaign marches to posters and pamphlets to sponsored Facebook posts, all parties are trying to etch their candidates name in the brains of students. On that front, social media is playing a crucial role and is taken extremely seriously by the parties, deploying vigorous and innovative tactics on social media to reach a larger base of students.

Taking the lead, the All India Students Association (AISA) started a serious online campaign earlier than any other party. With regular videos of their probable candidates discussing their stand on issues of the university and how AISA is going to solve them, they kicked off their campaign by talking about what concerns common students. Regular images and speeches of AISA cadre reaching out to students of various colleges and addressing classes surfaced on Facebook. 

An interesting tactic this year has been the use of memes by the party. As popular as memes have become over the past couple years, AISA has been using different memes to strike a chord with students on the social media platform, which was not a common a practice till last year.

Another example of use of ‘viral’ videos on social media has been the Sonu song. AISA has recycled the song and made it about how the campus has become violent and dangerous for students while remaining stagnant in real developmental terms for students, targeting the student union formed by the ABVP.

Apart from these mass appeasement campaigns, there have come regular articles criticizing the ABVP and NSUI for not fulfilling their election promises and appealing to students to come out and vote for AISA for a better DU.

The ABVP are actively campaigning on social media as well. Sharing the details of their candidates-their personal and political achievements and their ballot numbers. However, their social media campaign has been restricted to profiling of their candidates only. Ironically, the DU unit of ABVP has been actively campaigning for ABVP JNU unit on their Facebook pages. 

NSUI‘s campaign is no less as they went ahead and spent money for sponsored Facebook posts. Though NSUI haven’t yet declared the ballot numbers allotted to them and their candidates for the upcoming elections, they have been extensively campaigning through the Facebook page #TakeBack DU. 

The Left unity alliance of SFI and DSO has also been actively campaigning on Facebook with pictures of their interaction with common students of various colleges and videos of their campaign.

The result of all this remains to be seen on September 12. As almost all the parties have gone beyond the conventional methods of campaigning this year, the impact of which will benefit them definitely.