Why candidates are opting for social media

In the last decade private television channels have changed media ownership patterns, content and even the very concept of what ‘news’ is. That the advent of private television channels has changed Indian ‘mediascape’, a term Arjun ­Appadurai employs to refer to the many changes that globalisation has brought about, is an argument that we are only too familiar with.[1]They have had a far reaching influence on the media landscape, even on earlier mediums as print and broadcast. The 2014 general elections mark their impact on the new social media.

Social media sites are a hive of political activity with a range of political parties and personalities presenting their versions of ‘reality’ – from the tech-savvy BJP to the less media-savvy and smaller parties. Online campaigning is an established way in the democracies of the West. Social media’s popularity as a campaigning tool in 2014 has been attributed to the presence of the 23 million first-time voters. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supposedly borrowed from US President Barack Obama’s online strategy to make its electoral debut in December 2013. The AAP employed an application called ‘Thunderclap’ to remind voters on their Facebook pages to go to the polling booth to cast their votes; it urged non-resident Indians to leave video messages of support on YouTube and continues to employ the medium to collect funds and mobilise support.

There are two schools of thought -- ‘revolutionary’ and ‘normalisation’ – that seek to explain the impact of online technologies on democratic parties. The former focuses on the characteristics of the technology to facilitate instant responses, one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many interactions that can enhance democratic deliberation and participation, the Arab Spring being a case in point. The latter school of thought holds that the revolutionary potential is limited by social-political realities and the medium ‘normalises’ politics and political discourse rather than ‘revolutionises’.[2]

In India, the overwhelming ‘activity’ online indicates little understanding of the potential of the technology to change democratic politics in any way. Any evaluation of social media’s potential to transform is tempered by the fact that the projected internet penetration in the country translates to a mere 16 per cent of the population. Past instances have also proved the limitations of online campaigning. The defeat of the BJP in 2004, despite the media blitzkrieg, has been perceived as a reflection of the limited reach and influence of new communication technologies.

Despite his belief that the social media was a forum for alternative voices and his popularity among social media users, BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra  Modi- who is known to shy away from granting interviews to journalists- dropped out of the scheduled ‘Facebook talks live,’ on March 3, 2014. Both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi show little interest in harnessing the potential of new communication technologies for electoral politics. Also, almost all political parties use the medium for one-to-many communication, where messages are simply beamed to a perceived ‘captive’ audience. Comments are moderated and no discussion or deliberation is evident. Twitter and Facebook pages are all personality-based rather than idea or ideology-based. Neither school of academic thought thus quite explains the present onslaught on social media. The AAP’s successful use of new media technologies and the BJP’s early foray into the new medium may have been triggers; but the reasons for the political actors taking zealously to social media lie far from the potential of the medium to impact upon democratic politics.

An indication of why social media space is so attractive to political actors in electoral times is contained ironically, in the discourse on the mainstream media’s role in 2014 elections. A common refrain is that ‘media’ are partisan. Leaders of the Congress, the BJP and the AAP with regular frequency accuse ‘media’ of favouring other parties while treating their own party unfairly. What is interesting is that the charges imply that ‘media’ reacting in unison and hence a homogenous whole. Significantly, neither do media themselves make a distinction while repudiating the charges. They either speak for themselves as Times of India did on January 23, 2014, when it declared to its readers on Page 1 that the newspaper was not partisan, had no hidden agenda and was only ‘reader-oriented’. Or, like Times Now did on March 14, 2014, defended ‘media’ in general against charges that they were ‘paid’ by political parties. (The channel went on to devote a good part of its primetime Newshour debate to detail its lack of bias.) Few others single out ‘a section’ of the media for being guilty implying that most were not.

Indian media however, are  very diverse. Drawing up a typology of Indian television mediascape, authors Paula Chakravartty and Srirupa Roy argue that the Indian scenario is very different to systems of the West.[3]They categorise private commercial television in India as either directly or indirectly partisan i.e., those directly owned by politicians, political parties or those with known party affiliations, and those indirectly influenced by political parties. They term the other category ‘network media systems’, i.e., media outlets owned by “differentially formalized networks of business, political, and social actors”.  The typology of private television can well be extended to other media considering the prevalence of cross ownership in India. Mainstream news media both print and television, the topic of discussion in these times fit the description of ‘network media systems.’ They are not owned by political parties or politicians and hence do not fall under the category of ‘partisan media’. Details of their ownership and nature of capital invested may be known; nevertheless, their operations are ambiguous and their ideologies and political affinities remain matters of speculation.

What unites mainstream news media despite the differences in ownership and the fact that they compete for attention of much the same audience today is that their ‘news media logic’ prioritises commercial concerns pushing all other considerations to the background. Jesper StrÓ§mbäck defines ‘news media logic’ as ‘the institutional, technological, and sociological characteristics of the news media, including their format characteristics, production and dissemination routines, norms, and needs, standards of newsworthiness, and the formal and informal rules that govern news media’.[4] The ‘economic weakness’ of mainstream media has not only led to the evolution of ‘paid news’ but has also propelled them on the ‘perilous path of commercial journalism’ forcing them to tailor messages with a view to gain readership/viewership.

The overriding commercial concern explains the extensive coverage accorded to Kejriwal and the AAP that has far less resources than other political parties for media advertising. The flocking of mainstream media to the metaphorical waterhole has ensured that coverage extends to a range of political parties and actors cutting across party lines as long as, and only as long as their actions suit media’s purpose. An indiscriminating coverage of political issues, events and actors that allow exploitation commercially has led to the perception that media are vacillating in their loyalties. (It is also worth noting that ideological distinctions would be very difficult to make in these times of political crossovers when all political parties speak the same language.)

The universal realisation that news media’s compulsion to “garner audience attention while keeping down the costs,” dictates their functioning rather than the needs of political actors or of citizens[5] has led to ‘mediatisation’, where political parties and actors tailor their words and actions to suit the media agenda. In India it has pushed them into the new social space. The heightened activity online is explained by a clear understanding that mainstream media will only work towards protecting its revenue. For political actors the charm of new media lies first and last in that it provides political actors and parties the means to overcome the ‘news media logic’ to reach the voters. In an environment in which mainstream media’s agendas are considered suspect, social media provide the means to reach unhindered the ‘tech-savvy’ young voters who belong to a generation unburdened by memories of the past. 

That mainstream media is less concerned with ideological affinities is however not to be mistaken for neutrality. The marriage of politics and business together with media’s commercial imperatives has led to subtle and complex interactions among the three. ‘News media logic’ might direct attention to a range of political parties, actors, issues and events but does not hinder ‘framing’ in partisan ways. The overwhelming lack of trust in media in 2014 indicates that even if mainstream media picked issues based on their ability to generate controversies and attract most readership/viewership, the ‘frames’ in which they placed them create an impression of  bias. This calls for an in-depth analysis of election reportage by mainstream media to unravel the ways in which ideological affinities and commercial imperatives operate in the construction of ‘reality’.