SPECIAL | India's 'social media' elections 2014?

As the largest democracy prepares for the big day, India General Elections 2014 were different in a lot of ways. Apart from high-profile candidates, wars of words and the goal to gain power, this election season was strikingly different on the media charts as well.

Not only did major political parties use and abuse traditional media for campaigning and desired news coverage, the relatively ‘newer’ mediums of the internet and mobile were used extensively. Media houses on the other side, in the race to bring in the maximum readers and viewers, flexed their technology muscle and went all over the digital space. While a lot of print publications beefed up their online editions, news channels, in our opinion, have in a large way change the way elections were reported this season. From developing election-specific apps, to devising special Facebook pages and Twitter handles and hashtags to creating microsites and special YouTube spaces; the channels have turned General Election 2014 to ‘social media elections 2014’.

Social media giants – Facebook, Twitter and Google have emerged as major players in this election with political parties and candidates competing with each other in breaking the news, spreading their message through these outlets in addition to those via the traditional media. Possibly a matter of academic research, these players have seen substantial increase in their India traffic and usage. For instance Facebook has now 100 million users in India, its largest outside the US, while that of Twitter has more than doubled since January this year. After the 7th round of polling, there were 49 million Indian elections-related conversations on Twitter - more than double the 20 million Indian elections-related conversations on Twitter for all of 2013.

In 2009, Sashi Tharoor was the only Indian politician to have a Twitter account and had 6,000 followers; whereas five years later almost every major political leader has an account on the micro-blogging site. Tharoor is now the second most popular politician on Twitter with 2.16 million followers, after Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate with 3.89 million followers. Modi now also has nearly 14 million fans of Facebook. Barack Obama is the only other politician to have more Facebook fans than Modi.

“This election has seen massive interest online and so understandably is a key priority for NDTV. We have devoted a lot of time and attention to bringing the results as fast and clearly as possible on NDTV.com and our app. There will also be live blogging the entire result process online. NDTV.com is usually the market leader when it comes to Election Day”, said a senior official source from NDTV.

As on 15th May 2014, News X registered 91,395,645 YouTube views and 893748 followers on Twitter. ABP News had 4.4 Mn fan on its Facebook page, 5.2 lakhs followers on its official Twitter handle and 1.2 lakhs subscribers on YouTube.

This election could also be dubbed as the country's first Twitter election where candidates, journalists and citizens have been using the Twitter platform extensively to discover elections content, converse with others in real time, and express their views. Data collated shows that official Twitter handles of the English channels has registered significant increase in followers. As off 15th May 2014 - @ndtv has 8.03M followers, @timesnow was followed by 830K and @ibnlive had 780K followers. Celebrated journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s Twitter handle displayed 1.29M followers, while his ex-colleague turned competitor Barkha Dutt is followed by 1.33M people on Twitter and the newest to join the league Arnab Goswami has 11.7K followers on Twitter

While everyone was going gaga over Facebook posts and tweets, taking voters a step closer to the people we chose, Google provided platforms to politicians to reach out to their supporters through hangouts. It also created a Google Elections Hub for elections-related news and information created to help 800 million Indian voters stay informed and updated about the elections. The site also included features such as elections related News Videos, Search Trends, G+ Hangout Series, and an interactive Pledge to Vote campaign. “This election the Internet has been a catalyst and provided a great platform for political parties to leverage the power of social media to interact and mobilise young India to go out and vote. Google has received more than 3 million pledges by voters post our Pledge to Vote campaign and an incredible response to the 16 Hangouts by various political leaders during the election campaign. As India stand around the counting day, Google will continue to provide essential news and information to the voters, ensuring that they have all the relevant information at a single destination”, said Rajan Anandan, MD, Google India.

Even as the country awaits the results for the magnum opus of democracy, off all the tactics and drama this election season brought in with it, social media and its usage are sure to turn out the winners!