There were two clear winners in the 2014 general elections. One was of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which will be forming the new government. The other was social media, which proved to be an indispensable communication channel. In information-technology circles, this is now being referred to as the Twitter election but that description is unfair. While Twitter generated the highest volume of traffic, it was also a Facebook election and Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, etc. made key contributions to furthering democracy. The BJP's masterful use of social media helped spread its message and connected it to the key demographic of the first-time voter in 2014. It also helped the winning party to coordinate and deploy its own workers most effectively in constituency after constituency.
Of course, the BJP was not the only political formation to use social media. Every other political party attempted to use it; and the Aam Aadmi Party in particular, used it very effectively to compensate for the lack of money and of a traditional political organisation. Social media was the force multiplier which helped the AAP to build a political party from scratch within a few months. Party workers were recruited and coordinated on social media and funding was also crowd-sourced. A door-to-door outreach programme was implemented when the AAP made its spectacular debut in the Delhi Assembly elections of December 2013. That campaign too, was micro-managed via social media.
Several tools and channels were used in 2014 by various parties. Facebook pages generated a large number of 'likes' for major political parties. When Narendra Modi first appeared on a Google Hangout, the servers crashed due to the massive traffic spike. Twitter saw over 49 million election-related tweets between January and April. It created a "missed call to SMS" tool, which sent political tweets via SMS to anybody who made a missed call to a given number. This also allowed accounts like @narendramodi and @INCIndia (the offical Congress account) to reach wider audiences. Several political parties used WhatsApp and similar free messaging applications to send out campaign messages and to help their workers coordinate. WhatsApp allows the setting up of closed groups, which is ideal for political workers "leg-working". They can divide up a constituency, street by street, and share perspectives on the fly. Tied to Google search and GPS location, this enables large regions to be covered efficiently by relatively small groups. US President Barack Obama's campaign in 2008 was the pioneer at using such technologies effectively.
The demographics guarantee that social media will be increasingly important in the Indian political space. India has roughly 150 million voters currently in the under-25 years age group and the best way to engage with this demographic is via social media. India has over 240 million Internet users and over 100 million active Facebook users and 40 million active Twitter accounts. Those accounts are largely held by young people. India also has a huge number of Google users with over 120 million Gmail accounts. Social media penetration is rising rapidly as smartphone penetration takes off. Smartphone and social media usage changes news consumption patterns. Users in the age category of 18-25 years tend to find their news-links on Twitter and FB, or on aggregation services such as Pulse and Reddit. They read news sites and even watch television on their phones. They like the instant engagement - or the illusion thereof - that arises with a Tweet or an FB update. It is not a coincidence that India's next prime minister is reckoned to be the second most popular leader on Facebook worldwide, with over 13 million fans.
