1. Role of Social Media
in
Politics
Prof. Dhruva Trivedy
Chief Intervener & Promoter – PERCON
Country Head – Hubert Ebner India
Pvt. Ltd (Pioneers in Road Safety)

2. Recent Happenings - 1
• Technology has played a major role in
politics for the past few decades.
– Digitally processed Voters’ Identity Cards
– Use of the electronic ballot machines
– Debates, interviews and discussions on
the electronic media

3. Recent Happenings - 2
• Use of platforms such as Facebook,
Twitter, Google+ etc.
– Transition from Orkut to Facebook
• Generation X and Generation Y
• Proliferation of opinion
• The population factor
– The use of Blogs and Blog writing
– The emergence of Google+

4. Distribution of an opinion poll in the US

5. Some facts
• Just a couple of years ago, Indians
represented 20 per cent of all Orkut users
globally, but behind Brazil and the United
States

6. Some facts (cont’d)
• Internet is mainly used by the salaried class
and students in India
• Students mainly used it for social networking
and watching and downloading audio-visual
content
• The salaried class mainly used it for
communication activities such as e-
mailing, messaging, etc.

7. Distribution of the Facebook population of India

8. Some facts (cont’d)
• 52 per cent of Indian businesses
successfully used social networks to get
new business
• 32 per cent of the firms set aside a
proportion of marketing budget specifically
devoted to social networking activities (PR
or branding activity for the firms)

9. Some facts (cont’d)
• Political communication in India is
essentially election communication.
• Traditionally, political parties always come
out with their roadmaps, ahead of the polls,
for an incumbency lasting five years

10. Some facts (cont’d)
• Success stories of political protests raged in
Tunisia, Egypt and even in India (against
corruption)
• Canvassing through the social media was
observed in the recent West Bengal polls.

11. Questions that we need to ask
-1
• Why can the Political Parties not corporatise
themselves?
• Why can we not consistently use Social
Networking for party PR and not only before
?

12. Questions that we need to ask
-2
• Why do we need to have multiple pages or
blogs for our party on the same network?
• Why can we not structure (and strategise) our
approach on different networks?
• Why can we not distinguish between pages for
national issues, regional issues and local
issues?

13. Questions that we need to ask
-3
• If we are targeting the younger lot, are we
keeping to their expectations – both content
and design?
• Are we laying down and organising our
future plans and bringing in transparency
to highlight them, so that they become
aware?

14. Questions that we need to ask
-4
• Are we creating that edifice that our youth
is looking forward to –the Vision and the
Mission of the party?
• Are we configuring a way, by which at least
the urban youth has clarity and zest to
promote the cause of the party so that the
rural youth may follow suit?

15. TIME FOR
INTROSPECTION!!
THANK YOU VICHAR
GOSTHI!!