Political marketing is a process of effectively and efficiently applying the concepts and tools of marketing by the political parties to add value for voters and to achieve the coveted electoral success in an increasingly competitive political environment. This can be considered as an extension of the concept of marketing to the field of politics. Here, political parties are considered as marketers and voters are treated as consumers of offerings by political parties. It is the intangible service, which is offered by the political parties. Though political marketing activities were observed much later in Indian politics compared to developed countries, we have been observing some aggressive promotional drives by some political parties for nearly a decade and a half. Massive use by people in general, increased reach, possibility of seamless and tailored promotions and micro-targeting, comparative cost effectiveness, and availability of diverse platforms are some of the factors that have made social media a lucrative tool for Indian political parties for reaching out to voters and promoting themselves. This reality has even motivated them to divert promotional budget from traditional media to social media. Figures on publicity expenditure of all political parties taken together with respect to Lok Sabha Elections, 2019 reveal that social media promotions had the lion’s share (almost 78%). Lok Sabha Election, 2024, was no exception. Social media was the main battlefield and a dominant theatre of political campaigning in this election. But the great uncertainty in this regard is to establish a causal relation between the uses of social media tools and the electoral outcomes. Based mostly on online sources, this chapter seeks to explore how two national parties, the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress (INC) (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and two representative regional political parties, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the DMK, from Eastern and Southern India, respectively, have made use of social media with the help of real-time promotions and seamless advertising to engage voters, shape narratives, and manipulate perceptions of voters through AI-powered algorithms at micro level in the Lok Sabha Elections, 2024. Emergence of online “echo chambers” because of proliferation of political content on the social media is one of the striking features of the last Lok Sabha Elections. Here, individuals are exposed to only those viewpoints that they are aligned with. The AI-enabled predictive analytics to target swing voters was another striking feature of this election. It will be explored to what extent these were used. As per the available information, both INCIndian National Congress (INC) and BJP spent a huge amount of money on social media platforms and their presence was very much felt but INCIndian National Congress (INC) was far behind in terms of the reach on those platforms. Efforts will also be made to examine how these select political parties have allocated funds to different platforms of social media. The chapter, in conclusion, will seek to explore the correlation between the investment in social media tools and the electoral dividends by political parties.

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Uses of Social Media Tools in the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections in India: A Case Study of National and Regional Parties

  • Sumantra Bhattacharya

摘要

Political marketing is a process of effectively and efficiently applying the concepts and tools of marketing by the political parties to add value for voters and to achieve the coveted electoral success in an increasingly competitive political environment. This can be considered as an extension of the concept of marketing to the field of politics. Here, political parties are considered as marketers and voters are treated as consumers of offerings by political parties. It is the intangible service, which is offered by the political parties. Though political marketing activities were observed much later in Indian politics compared to developed countries, we have been observing some aggressive promotional drives by some political parties for nearly a decade and a half. Massive use by people in general, increased reach, possibility of seamless and tailored promotions and micro-targeting, comparative cost effectiveness, and availability of diverse platforms are some of the factors that have made social media a lucrative tool for Indian political parties for reaching out to voters and promoting themselves. This reality has even motivated them to divert promotional budget from traditional media to social media. Figures on publicity expenditure of all political parties taken together with respect to Lok Sabha Elections, 2019 reveal that social media promotions had the lion’s share (almost 78%). Lok Sabha Election, 2024, was no exception. Social media was the main battlefield and a dominant theatre of political campaigning in this election. But the great uncertainty in this regard is to establish a causal relation between the uses of social media tools and the electoral outcomes. Based mostly on online sources, this chapter seeks to explore how two national parties, the Indian National CongressIndian National Congress (INC) (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and two representative regional political parties, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the DMK, from Eastern and Southern India, respectively, have made use of social media with the help of real-time promotions and seamless advertising to engage voters, shape narratives, and manipulate perceptions of voters through AI-powered algorithms at micro level in the Lok Sabha Elections, 2024. Emergence of online “echo chambers” because of proliferation of political content on the social media is one of the striking features of the last Lok Sabha Elections. Here, individuals are exposed to only those viewpoints that they are aligned with. The AI-enabled predictive analytics to target swing voters was another striking feature of this election. It will be explored to what extent these were used. As per the available information, both INCIndian National Congress (INC) and BJP spent a huge amount of money on social media platforms and their presence was very much felt but INCIndian National Congress (INC) was far behind in terms of the reach on those platforms. Efforts will also be made to examine how these select political parties have allocated funds to different platforms of social media. The chapter, in conclusion, will seek to explore the correlation between the investment in social media tools and the electoral dividends by political parties.