Social media has pockets of influence at best
According to a recent report, Facebook can impact results in as many as 120 lok Sabha seats. This only confirms the growing clout of social media in the country's political space to influence voter behaviour. There is no doubt that social media has provided an alternative platform to people who had earlier no choice but to simmer in silent anger over what they believed was at times heavily motivated material which the conventional electronic and print media have been offering. In many ways, therefore, social media reflects the ‘real' opinion of the people using the platform, and it serves to correct the distortions that we see in the mainstream media. The fact that users of social media sites are growing in number and consequent influence, means that political parties and leaders can no longer afford to ignore their reach and ability to ‘make or break’. Some like Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had realised this well before his peers, which is why he is one of the most active and followed leaders on social media sites and has had a head-start over his contemporaries. Others like Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah too have been using the platform to promote their opinions on a variety of issues, primarily political. But, regardless of this growing wave, it would be naïve to believe that social media can play a decisive role in determining election results on a large scale. People who get carried away by the arrival of Facebook, Twitter and the like tend to forget that a vast majority of the population does not have access to electricity, much less computers and internet. A large number of the country's voters is blissfully oblivious of the ferocious online wars that are being waged on a daily basis. Caste and religion still play an important role in determining their choice of candidate. If that is not the case for some reason, money and muscle power become the crucial factor. At times, it is party loyalty that clinches the issue. In some cases, the politics of development gets to play an important role.
While social media activists are engaged in shaping political opinion on a daily basis in the hope that the cumulative effect of that will show on election day, the millions of voters who are not as privileged have only one chance to demonstrate their choice — election day. As far as they are concerned, nothing has changed except the arrival of electronic voting machines. Of course, the introduction of EVMs has made it rather inconvenient for booth-capturing mobs to have their way. That's a good development, just as the fact that the voters have now become more independent and less prone to follow the flock or vote according to ‘directives' from village elders. Perhaps it will help if the politically active elements on social media also find ways to reach out to the rest of the population and engage them in a discourse.