Information holds the key in the battle of supremacy between two rival political parties of India — Congress and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) — thus propelling the BJP to make the most of the medium of information sharing, especially social media to wrest control of power at the Centre from archrival in the upcoming lok Sabha elections.
The information managers of BJP campaign committee’s head Narendra Modi, projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate by a section of party, on a day’s visit to the capital taught the nitty-gritty’s of media management to the workers of the State BJP unit. “Party wants to fully utilise the technology available to its benefit and reach out to the younger generation,” said BJP spokesperson Pradeep Sinha.
As many as 106 party workers from across the State associated with media management attended the one-day workshop to hone their media management skills besides getting a feel of power that social media holds in the era of information technology. The information managers enlightened the party workers about the influence that dedicated pages, forums, on Facebook, Twitter posts and other similar applications wield over internet users.
The role played by the social media and related applications in shaping an electorate’s behavior was central to the team’s one-day training programme. “We are trying to reach as many people as possible through Facebook and Twitter,” pointed out Sinha. Interestingly, the idea to harness the power of techno savvy younger generation and ride the wave of information technology seems to have originated from the Chairman of the BJP campaign committee for 2014 general elections.
Sinha added, “Narendra Modi is also techno savvy so he must have contributed to the programme which will be organized in other states as well.” Modi was elevated to the post of Chairman of Campaign Committee after BJP’s executive committee meeting that was held in Goa in June this year. However, information technology is yet to be reckoned as a potent medium to influence voting behavior of rural masses and that is why it ceases to be an advantage for any political party once campaigning programme enters rural India.
Acknowledging the limitations of technology Sinha said, “We do not prefer social media over traditional method of campaigning. We will reach rural electorate through the traditional way besides other medium like mobile phones.” The second phase for learning media management techniques is slated to kickstart from August 17 in Delhi which will be attended by State level media managers of the BJP. Incidentally, the pools of media managers were also informed about other mediums of information sharing, art of preparing news fit for the consumption of media, use of search engines for extracting information from internet and maintaining camaraderie with media persons.