From social media to data analytics, 2019 election battle goes digital

Most parties have dedicated in-house teams to manage their social media campaigns aimed at moulding voter perceptions in their favour

“Modi tujhse bair nahi, par maama teri khair nahi" (There is nothing against you Modi but, uncle, you won’t be spared).

This slogan appeared on a social networking platform in 2017, alluding to the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as “maama”. A year later, it became an overarching narrative in the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and, with suitable modifications, in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Variations of this slogan, which endorses the Bharatiya Janata Party’s central leadership but opposes it in the state, became a source of countless memes, WhatsApp forwards and Facebook posts. Interestingly, the slogan came neither from the Congress nor the BJP.

“Most likely, this slogan originated from a faction of BJP supporters — maybe those from upper castes — who were unhappy with their state leaders but continue to repose faith in Prime Minister Modi,” said a campaign specialist who worked  on the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan elections and did not wish to be named.

The Congress went on to win in all three states, using variations of the same slogan to hurt the BJP. The campaign specialist called it “a unique form of protest where party supporters can use social media to create a narrative to beat their own party’s official campaign”.

Welcome to the reality of pre-election India in 2019. The last time India voted, it brought the BJP to power with an absolute majority and much of the credit for this was given to the effective use of technology, starting from the selection of candidates after gauging their popularity index and the demographic profile of the voters, and thanks to the huge social media outreach.

With the next general election expected to begin in the first week of April, every political party, including regional ones such as the Samajwadi Party, the People’s Democratic Party, the Trinamool Congres  etc — has realised the importance of the internet and digital technology in winning elections. Most have dedicated in-house teams to manage their social media campaigns aimed at moulding voter perceptions in their favour through videos, memes, posters, and jokes.  

“Social and digital media are responsible for a very high level perception game,” said Osama Manzar, founder-director at Digital Empowerment Foundation , a non-profit that works to promote digital literacy.

While the previous general elections were marked by large political parties using mainstream political platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to run paid campaigns to woo first time voters, 2019 will see them adopt a three-pronged strategy.

First, parties are using not just online but also offline data collection for better outreach. Second, they are using less well-known messaging platforms to reach out to voters. And third, they have increased the use of regional language messaging and campaigning.  

In 2014, the BJP’s use of Narendra Modi’s 3D hologram rallies or “Chai pe Charcha” which made use of satellite, internet and mobile technology to facilitate conversations over tea, established the party’s tech-savvy credentials, in addition to bolstering its popularity on Twitter and Facebook.

In the five years since, the internet user base has grown considerably, helped by cheaper smartphones and affordable internet connections. There were 481 million internet users until December 2017, compared to 278 million in 2014, a 73 per cent jump, according to data from the Internet and Mobile Association of India. A more significant increase is in the number of rural Internet users. From 61 million active users in 2014, the number has more than tripled to 186 million by December 2017.

“In 2019, it is a fair assumption to make that every voter in India can be reached through their mobile phone. This may not have been true in the 2014 elections,” said Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of the data analytics department at the Congress Party.

The brain behind the party’s Shakti app, which is meant for the party leadership to interact with booth level workers and get feedback from them, Chakravarty said the aim is to cover every single booth or polling station.

Within the realm of social media, videos are a clear winner because of the lower cost of internet access, said Ankit Lal, social media and IT strategist of the Aam Aadmi Party.

“Videos today are most exhaustive, they take a lot more effort. The usage of apps has also made an impact in a huge way. The other things are digital ads on big platforms like Google,” said Lal.

It’s not just about Facebook or Twitter, he added. While YouTube and Instagram have more obvious political content coming from political parties, even professional networks like LinkedIn are being used for more covert political messaging.

As political parties delve deeper into technology, they understand the importance of having reliable data on voter sentiment. Consequently, they are not just relying on digital data sets, but also on on-ground intelligence on what the voter wants.

“For example, if there are 60,000 booths in Madhya Pradesh and there are 10 workers in every booth, then I have six lakh data points about the sentiment from every booth. The (Shakti) platform allows them to log the sentiment and then we run a sentiment analysis tool developed in-house,” said Chakravarty. 

A data analytics professional who has worked on designing several campaigns for different political parties said that, compared to 2014, there is a much greater focus now on building interconnected databases. 

For example, consider a party app that collects your basic information such as your phone number, name, and political leaning. There could be another website or public database that has more information connected to your phone number, such as the number of times you have voted, your caste, education, and so on. In the next election, parties will look to combine all this data and build as deep a profile of you as a voter as possible.

The rise in regional language content has been helped by platforms like Sharechat which allow users to generate content in 14 Indian languages and instantly share it through messaging apps. This allows parties to reach out to a larger voter base. Founded by IIT-Kanpur alumni in 2015, Sharechat has over 50 million installs just on Google’s Play Store alone.

But the lack of regulation over the content on these platforms means that false information or claims can end up on people’s phones.  Facebook-owned WhatsApp, with over 200 million users, responded to a controversy about fake news by limiting the number of messages that can be forwarded in one go to five.

“The way WhatsApp has reacted to misinformation or disinformation, political parties have become constrained and you will find different parties having different levels of group-making to get their message across,” said DEF’s Manzar, referring to the fact that instead of large, nation-wide WhatsApp groups, parties are taking group-making to smaller units at the district or village level.

Another significant development has been the rise of fact-checker websites and platforms such as AltNews and Boom Fact Check who regularly nail malicious or misleading claims.

Reactions tend to be faster than ever. When the Congress shared a video showing Modi making a pronunciation gaffe, the BJP instantly shared one showing Rahul Gandhi making a similar mistake. With so much information swirling around, voters are likely to be more aware, and perhaps also more sceptical, about the claims politicians make. So while it might be easier to use technology to sway them, it might also, paradoxically, be harder. The winners may turn out to be those who can use these technologies to maximum effect.