VictorBuzz

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his social media minions have made him the world’s most socially-active leader during his two years in office. With more than 20 million followers on his Twitter account and another 34 million likes on Facebook — he has an almost unprecedented online presence. In modern India, the fifth estate to democracy is social media. This media, of late, has more power than the press to motivate and brainwash people to believe what the high and mighty want them to believe. And hats off to the BJP and its strategists for the way they have used social media to project the picture-perfect image of Mr. Modi. Manipulating social media was started way back in the 2000s and was fine-tuned to become propaganda machinery of Mr. Modi by Mr. Prashant Kishore and his group CAG. The 3D campaign of a hologram of Mr. Modi coming out of thin air and addressing rallies, the “chai pe charcha”, the addresses on Twitter were the brain of Mr. Kishore and his group. ‘The idea was to make Mr. Modi omnipresent’ Prashant Kishore. ( Ref- TOI, October 20, 2018). Incidentally, the CAG group was employed by the BJP in the 2014 elections for designing their poll strategies. After the advent of Mr. Modi, the social media has been awash with carefully constructed Post Truth ( political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored, Oxford Dictionary). That is why we observe I support Narendra Modi for Demonetisation group come up in WhatsApp and have FB page of the same name. The recent “main Bhi chowkidar” as a Twitter handle, how is the josh! are continuations of the same game.

Mr. Modi is a powerful orator, even can be said to be one of the best orators who have adorned the post of PM in
India. But in these 5 years how many press conferences did Mr. Modi do? Only one and that too a scripted and choreographed interview with ANI ( ref- Shatrughan Sinha, News 18, Jan 3, 2019). But Mr. Modi is omnipresent in the social media sharing or rather vehemently promoting his and his government’s success stories. The onslaught does not stop at promoting success stories only. The malicious campaign against a particular community by posting blast images of Iraq/ Afghanistan and terming them to be from Kashmir, targetting a particular politician, be it Mr
Kejriwal or Ms. Banerjee for opposing Mr. Modi, or the naming of a person Pappu and spreading politically motivated jokes over him are all parts of the same game plan to manipulate social media users. The idea is to create a Good or God in Mr. Modi and anyone opposing him as an Evil/anti-national in the social media and ensure that this thought process is carried to the ballot boxes or rather the EVM machines and thus help BJP win the polls. The Government is not the one who hires people but the BJP does hire people and has a 3 story office in Ahmadabad to
manage social media, pages on Facebook, and accounts on Twitter. They create memes and messages which are sent to people via several communication channels but that is the way of marketing about their party and other political parties would be doing this as well.

BJP does have a stronghold on social media with blunts of supporters most of which don’t even think before
forwarding the content to others being it correct or not. A lot of people say that it’s the Modi factor or Magic which has worked, truly the kind of impact Modi’s persona has over the people of India is unimaginable. But another factor that has dominated the elections is the digital marketing strategy of BJP which is a game-changer and the use of BJP social media Campaigns. They have used the Digital platforms with full force, and now you can also call MODI AS “MAN OF DIGITAL INDIA”.Social media marketing in politics is playing a huge role in Indian democracy.

Times are changing and political parties and politicians have found possibly the easiest way of reaching out to aspiring youth of the country. BJP has used Digital Media as a tool to have a strong connection with people. Exploring social media has worked for BJP in 2014 elections also, even financial times & the new York times has specially mentioned in their reports that how BJP has been able to reach out to the voters through a Digital marketing strategy. Before we start about political digital marketing of Bharatiya Janata Party let’s see the number of likes and followers on social media than see how BJP reached them via different social media campaigns. BJP is leading with maximum followers and, Narendra Modi is one of the most followed leaders of the world across Social Media. BJP has created the pages in the name of their party and their leader Narendra Modi. US President Donald Trump, No. 2 on Facebook, is way behind
Modi with 23.3 million likes. Bharatiya Janta Party leads the social media being actively present on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The party owns the highest numbers of fans on Facebook compared to its competitors, i.e. approx. 16 million. In terms of data up until now, Modi has led 609 million interactions in terms of likes, shares, etc and the number of posts since May 2014 stands at 180 million. His video views have been more than 269.64 million. Economic policies and global diplomacy are apart, Modi’s biggest hits on Facebook.

On Twitter, Modi has 47.5 million followers making him the third most followed person on Twitter globally. And with most interactions on Twitter, Modi beats the Pope but remains behind Trump. Modi had 52 million interactions while Trump had 564 million. Social media has played a vital role in personal brand building and in the governance of the current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi. From declaring everyday developmental works to solving grievances of the citizens, the current government has rightly harnessed the power of digital media and has been able to emerge as a world superpower. During the tenure of the Modi government, there are definitely a few noteworthy points on how the government and especially, Modi ensured the correct use of digital media and climbed up the ladder of being the most followed political leaders in the world. India’s 2014 prime ministerial elections witnessed an unprecedented outcome, where the Bharatiya Janta Party callously defeated the Indian National Congress by majority votes, and Narendra Modi stood elected as the 15th prime minister of India. This outstanding electoral victory is being extensively debated and analyzed across print and broadcast media for its remarkable campaigning strategies that successfully established a two-way dialogue between the prime ministerial elect, Narendra Modi, and the voter population of India. The use of social media and adoption of campaigning tactics from the Obama US-presidential campaign
has been centric to this winning campaign for brand NaMo. The amalgamation of social media and election campaigning has clearly redefined the face of political movements in India.

The stratagem that team Modi followed to break the Congress era running in the country over the past decade will be concisely anatomized, with a particular interest in the role and power of social media in giving a political party that winning edge over its opposition. Pitching a specific leader as a driver of change and mobilizing voters’ support is hardly a new political strategy. After all, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had projected L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee its prime ministerial candidates in the past (remember the “Ab ki baari Atal Bihari” the slogan in 1996?). The Congress party’s projection of Indira Gandhi as the country’s tallest leader with its ‘Indira Lao desh bachao’ tagline in the 1970s is another such example. But the personal rhetoric had been tied, and sometimes made subservient, to the political parties to which these leaders belonged. With his landslide win in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Narendra
Modi has rewritten the rules of the game and redefined Indian politics. David Aaker, American marketing guru and author of several books on branding, wrote in an April 2012 blog post that every person has a brand that affects how the person is perceived and whether he or she is liked and respected. This brand, he says, can be actively managed with discipline and consistency.