Political discourse has changed with rise of social media. Going innovative in campaigning for the Delhi Assembly polls, the Delhi BJP is all set to adopt technology-driven tools to woo electorates.
Inspired by its Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s campaigning during Gujarat Assembly polls, the party is taking to crowdsourcing for electioneering in the Capital.
Crowdsourcing is the practice of spreading messages, services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than traditional public meetings and rallies.
A senior Delhi BJP leader said the trial of crowdsourcing campaign was done during Modi’s rally in the Capital on September 29 wherein BJP volunteers circulated his messages electronically to a large group who were not present at the rally.
“During Modi’s address, our volunteers tweeted his speech creating an online buzz. This aimed at connecting to people, who cannot make it to the rallies, in real time,” he said, adding volunteers would use all the virtual tools to spread the massage of candidates, prominent leaders and party’s policies to as many people via the online medium.
“As part of crowdsourcing, virtual tools like Twitter, Facebook will be used for the purpose,” he added. As per plan, separate groups of tech-savvy volunteers will be formed in each of theAssembly constituencies. Besides dissemination of messages, these teams will also be collecting feedback from the public.
“At least 70 groups have been formed in equal number of Assembly constituencies. They work on local issue and problem of the particular constituencies and try to spread our views and solution to specific problems,” party leaders said.
However, apart from adopting new campaign strategies, the Delhi BJP is also focussing on traditional ways of electioneering like door-to-door campaign, padyatras and roadshows, among others. A senior leader said the programmes of prominent leaders, including some national leaders are being finalised. The party is also planning to launch its TV and radio advertisements. To prepare its campaign strategy, party is hiring advertisement agencies to finalise the same.
For door-to-door campaign, BJP will be launching Maha Jan Sampark Abhiyan in which workers in several groups will be visiting 35 lakh households in the national Capital.
“For each polling station, two groups of 10 party workers will visit each and every household. It is targeted that the party workers will visit all 35 lakh households within a week,” said a BJP leader.
Just as social media has changed our access to politicians and our means of communicating with them and our fellow citizens, technology may one day make direct democracy a reality.