FB, Twitter, WhatsApp BJP’s new battleground

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 17

The upcoming Lok Sabha elections will be an intense, high-stakes tussle for power like all others, but with one difference — it is likely to be as hotly contested in the virtual world as in the real one.

Using information technology to the hilt, the state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unit has moved far ahead of the Congress in the IT war on the social media and made the elections Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi.

In the hill state, where there are over 87,73,409 mobile users, the BJP has already more than 2 lakh followers on Facebook, one lakh on Twitter and 10,000 on Instagram. And the competition is not with the Congress, but with the BJP Gujarat cell, says Chetan Bragata, head of the state party unit IT cell.

“The narrative on the social media is to project the leadership of Narendra Modi by highlighting development schemes and initiatives launched by him at the national level and by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur at the state level, thereby effectively countering the false propaganda of the Congress and fake news created to mislead the people”, he said while talking to The Tribune.

Citing an example, Bragata said a fake news that a village in Rohru was without electricity for 18 days was making the rounds on social networking sites. However, the truth was that a transformer was burnt and the village was without electricity for a few hours as arrangement from an alternate transformer was made. “We aggressively countered it with facts,” he said.

The party’s IT cell is hyperactive in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp through creative videos, cartoons, wallpapers with slogans and other narratives besides newspaper cuttings and links.

The party is reaching out to voters across the state with ease as the technology has reached all parts of the state and there is no rural and urban divide. There are over 1,000 IT volunteers at the state, district mandal and block levels keeping a close watch on the social media and giving inputs and feedback.

The BJP is using video clips to send messages across to create visual impact and also organising audio conferences and live streaming through the use of digital cameras on Facebook and YouTube, a mode of campaign used in the hill state for the first time in the elections.

BJP workers are promptly sharing all posts which suit the party to have multiplying effect and the strategy is working as a large number of followers, who are not members of the party, are also sharing the posts.

The new weapon

• In the hill state, where there are over 87,73,409  mobile users, the BJP has already more than 2 lakh followers on  Facebook, one lakh on Twitter and 10,000 on Instagram.
• The BJP’s IT cell is hyperactive in social  networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp  through creative videos, cartoons, wallpapers with slogans and other  narratives.
• BJP workers are promptly sharing all posts which suit the  party to have multiplying effect and the strategy is working as a large  number of followers are also sharing  the posts.