India epitomizes the worldwide communication know-how revolution. In the early Nineties, there have been solely an estimated six landline phones for each 1,000 Indians and the ready time for a brand new telephone connection was measured not in days or even weeks, however months. Today, smartphones—the first units Indians use to entry the web and social media—may be bought over-the-counter inside minutes and their presence is ubiquitous. This transformation is additional enabled by the affordability of cellular knowledge in India, which has a number of the most cost-effective charges on the planet. By the top of 2022, roughly two-thirds of the Indian inhabitants had been utilizing smartphones, and by 2026, it’s predicted the nation can be residence to one billion smartphone users. In latest years, India’s political events have more and more turned to social media and the messaging app WhatsApp of their campaigns, main observers to characterize the 2019 parliamentary election as “the WhatsApp election.”

However, alongside the proliferation of smartphone utilization, which permits for low-cost party-voter communication, India’s events proceed to conduct mass in-person marketing campaign rallies throughout election season. For occasion, prior to India’s 2019 national general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian National Congress’s (INC, also called the Congress Party) Rahul Gandhi every addressed round 140 in-person rallies through the official two-month marketing campaign. These had been accompanied by much more rallies that includes different high-level leaders (or “star campaigners,” as they’re recognized in Indian parlance) within the run-up to the April–May common elections.

The ongoing prevalence of mass marketing campaign rallies within the digital age motivates a broader query concerning the fashionable marketing campaign in India. Why do in-person mass marketing campaign rallies—that are costly, labor-intensive, and time-consuming—persist when there are cheaper methods for events to conduct extra focused outreach on-line? More particularly, how are internet-based communication applied sciences—together with social media—shaping social gathering campaigns in India right now?

Continued Importance of In-Person Campaigning in India

An evaluation of events’ self-reported marketing campaign expenditures reveals that, through the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections, each the BJP and the Congress Party spent between one-quarter and one-third of their complete marketing campaign expenditure on in-person campaigning, with a considerable share spent on rallies. Nationally consultant surveys carried out by the Lokniti program of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies reveal that in campaigns for the 5 most up-to-date nationwide parliamentary elections in India—from 1999 to 2019—the share of voters attending election conferences or rallies has remained steady at about 20 %.

A face-to-face survey carried out by the creator with roughly 4,000 voters in Uttar Pradesh (essentially the most populous state within the nation) towards the backdrop of the 2022 state meeting election revealed that voters think about in-person campaigning to be of excessive significance for voter outreach. In the survey, every voter was requested to rank the significance of 5 marketing campaign actions of a celebration in its voter outreach efforts: door-to-door canvassing, mass marketing campaign rallies, campaigning on social media, social gathering ads on TV and radio, and social gathering ads on roadside public posters and billboards. As proven in determine 1, for smaller, regional-level events, 73 % of surveyed voters thought-about in-person campaigning—resembling door-to-door campaigning and mass marketing campaign rallies—to be a very powerful marketing campaign exercise for voter outreach. Even for big, national-level events—such because the BJP and the Congress Party—practically 54 % of the surveyed voters thought-about in-person campaigning to be of best significance. This means that, whatever the social gathering, voters think about in-person campaigning to be a minimum of as essential as campaigning by different modes, resembling campaigning on social media, social gathering ads within the mass media and on roadside public posters and billboards.

Innovation or Normalization?

Existing scholarship on how the rising use of the web will have an effect on social gathering marketing campaign technique is split into two schools of thought. The first originates from an optimistic view that posits that the web can reform politics. It is called the innovation hypothesis and holds that as web use turns into widespread, social gathering campaigns carried out on social media platforms will substitute for in-person, conventional social gathering campaigns. Proponents of this principle count on digital applied sciences to fundamentally upend marketing campaign politics, rendering bodily campaigning out of date. This prediction, predicated on a logic of technological determinism, implies {that a} social gathering can probably run a profitable marketing campaign fully on-line, with out a lot of a floor presence.

On the opposite hand, the normalization hypothesis asserts that, whilst web use will increase, a celebration’s on-line campaigns will complement—reasonably than exchange—conventional, in-person marketing campaign actions. This logic holds that in-person campaigning is predicted to remain central to social gathering technique, finally leading to “politics as usual.” In the digital age, bodily campaigning will merely be replicated on-line. This principle means that sooner or later, events might merely live-stream their in-person marketing campaign occasions on social media.

However, proof from latest election campaigns in India doesn’t simply align with both of those hypotheses: on-line social gathering campaigns haven’t changed in-person social gathering campaigns, and conventional, in-person social gathering campaigns aren’t merely being reproduced on social media platforms.

Content-Complementarity During Party Campaigns in India

In fashionable Indian political campaigns, events strategically leverage content-complementarity—a two-way relationship between on-line and in-person campaigning.

For events, social media creates a perpetual demand for them to provide on-line content material. In-person marketing campaign actions, particularly marketing campaign rallies, are a invaluable supply of content material. Scholars have discovered that rallies obtain a variety of functions, resembling fixing asymmetric informationwithin a party and enabling clientelistic exchanges between parties and voters. In addition, rallies present events with on-line materials. This added objective boosts the significance of rallies right now. Moreover, the demand for on-line content material additionally shapes how events conduct mass marketing campaign rallies.

In advance of an upcoming rally, a celebration will broadcast details about it on social media platforms—resembling Twitter (now X), Facebook, and WhatsApp—to mobilize lower-level social gathering functionaries and voters.¹ After the rally’s conclusion, the social gathering will choose particular pictures, speech excerpts, sound bites, and shows of enthusiasm from the rally to share on social media. In an more and more on-line world, a celebration should present voters real-world proof that it has the help of different voters like them. Voters see real-world evidence as very important in evaluating a celebration’s match with their pursuits. Voters additionally interpret bodily campaigning as indicative of a celebration’s prospects for electoral success.

A celebration’s concurrent use of various campaigning modes extends the rally’s shelf life, giving it a pre-life and afterlife on social media. In the digital age, the rally-organizing social gathering can bypass mainstream media, disseminating rally content material on social media. For the social gathering that organizes a rally, the advantages of the occasion are not restricted to reaching those that bodily attend it. Rather, by content material circulated on social media, a rally’s results journey to voters’ telephones transcending the rally’s time and place. Content from in-person rallies, when shared on social media, can concurrently affect voter perceptions of the rally-organizing social gathering and mobilize voters for the social gathering’s future rallies.

Content-complementarity manifests most explicitly in content material about rally crowds. In the social media period, the dimensions of a rally crowd has taken on a brand new that means. Because rally crowds present ready-made content material for events’ on-line engagement, they’re high-stakes endeavors, laden with nice dangers (in the event that they flop) in addition to nice rewards (in the event that they succeed). Photographs and movies revealing low turnout are fodder for an opposition social gathering to take advantage of on social media to mock the rally-organizing social gathering for its obvious lack of help. This can negatively impression voter perceptions concerning the rally-organizing social gathering and demobilize voters from taking part in its marketing campaign.

On the opposite hand, if a big crowd seems for a rally, the rally-organizing social gathering can boast concerning the giant rally crowd turnout on social media, sharing pictures and video clips. This, in flip, can positively affect voter perceptions concerning the rally-organizing exercise and mobilize voters to take part in its marketing campaign.

Party-Voter Linkages: Evidence From Party Campaigns

To check the events’ use of content-complementarity, the creator examined partisan tweets throughout latest state election campaigns within the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. For Uttar Pradesh, the creator investigated content material on the official Twitter handles of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh (@BJP4UP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) (@samajwadiparty), which had been respectively the incumbent and principal challenger within the 2022 state election. A content material evaluation of practically 9,300 tweets that appeared from these handles through the marketing campaign interval revealed that round 40 % of partisan tweets included rally content material (see determine 2). For each the BJP and the SP, amongst tweets that contained rally content material, a minimum of 75 % included post-rally content material.

For Madhya Pradesh, the creator examined content material on the official Twitter handles of the state models of the ruling BJP (@BJP4MP) and the opposition Congress Party (@INCMP). A content material evaluation of round 3,100 tweets that appeared from these handles through the 2023 state election marketing campaign interval uncovered the same sample. Around 35 % of tweets contained rally content material, and of these, virtually 70 % included post-rally content material.

A exceptional proportion of partisan Twitter knowledge contained rally content material, and a hanging proportion of this was post-rally content material, which generally consisted of pictures of the rally crowd and the social gathering’s campaigner and movies from the campaigner’s rally speech.

On Twitter, events boasted about “historic” crowd sizes at their rallies. For occasion, in a single tweet, which included an accompanying video with visuals of huge rally crowds, @BJP4UP said: “jan sailab phir se itihaas likhne jaa raha hai, UP mein phir se kamal khilne jaa raha hai” (translation: “[this] flood of people is going to write history, the lotus is going to bloom again in UP”).² In one other tweet, which included a video with a speech excerpt that referred to the massive crowd gathered on the rally website, @samajwadiparty said: “aitihasik jansamarthan bata raha hai badlaav hone jaa raha hai” (translation: “[this] historic people’s support is telling us that change is going to happen”).

Party circulation of post-rally content material shouldn’t be restricted to Twitter. Among the roughly 400 social gathering functionaries from the BJP and the SP of whom the creator carried out a face-to-face survey in Uttar Pradesh in 2022, an amazing share (90 %) mentioned that they posted pictures and/or movies from their social gathering’s rallies on WhatsApp and/or Facebook, platforms on which a big share of the Indian voters is energetic. Moreover, among the many practically 2,000 respondents surveyed in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 who had been smartphone customers, 53 % reported having seen pictures and/or movies of marketing campaign rallies on their telephones a minimum of as soon as a day within the lead-up to the state election, suggesting that voters had been incessantly uncovered to on-line rally content material through the marketing campaign. This publicity to rally content material has the potential to affect voter perceptions and voter mobilization, particularly amongst smartphone customers.

Intra-Party Linkages: Evidence From Party Organization in India

In addition to leveraging content-complementarity for party-voter linkages, events additionally make the most of this complementarity for constructing and sustaining intra-party linkages. Each of India’s main events has an organizational vertical—variously known as the social gathering’s IT and social media cell, division, staff, or wing—devoted to producing and circulating recent social media content material. Content creation and dissemination are among the many core capabilities of those verticals, which function from a celebration’s top-most degree (the nationwide or state degree) all the way down to its lowest tier (the polling sales space degree).

The demand for intra-party on-line content material raises the significance of in-person social gathering occasions and shapes how they’re carried out. Online content material related to in-person social gathering occasions fosters intra-party on-line engagement between social gathering elites, social gathering functionaries throughout hierarchy ranges, and grassroots social gathering employees. For occasion, after in-person social gathering occasions, by sharing content material from occasions through which they’ve participated, social gathering elites and functionaries working at a celebration’s center and excessive ranges can solid themselves as function fashions and try to encourage these beneath them in a celebration’s organizational hierarchy. In flip, lower-level social gathering functionaries and social gathering employees can use social media to sign their means and loyalty to a celebration’s higher-ups.

To disseminate on-line content material, political events try to determine sturdy networks on-line. A survey of social gathering functionaries in Uttar Pradesh discovered that the majority functionaries of the BJP and the SP made use of smartphone apps for social gathering functions, particularly WhatsApp and Facebook (see determine 3).

Sixty-six % of surveyed social gathering functionaries mentioned that they’d shaped new political WhatsApp teams throughout their social gathering’s marketing campaign for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh election. Among those that had shaped these teams, roughly 70 % reported that they’d largely included their social gathering’s employees and supporters in these teams, whereas the rest reported that they’d largely included voters in these teams. Strikingly, of the social gathering functionaries who had shaped WhatsApp teams with voters, round 65 % mentioned that they obtained voters’ telephone numbers by door-to-door visits, suggesting one other sort of complementarity between a celebration’s in-person and on-line outreach.

To perceive how usually social gathering functionaries talk over WhatsApp for social gathering functions, the creator requested them what number of instances in a day they used WhatsApp for intra-party communication and what number of instances for voter communication (see determine 4). On common, through the 2022 state election marketing campaign in Uttar Pradesh, BJP functionaries mentioned that they used WhatsApp to speak with different social gathering functionaries and employees round fifty-five instances a day. For SP functionaries, this quantity was barely decrease at forty-eight instances a day. Both BJP and SP functionaries used WhatsApp to speak with voters throughout their campaigns round forty to fifty instances a day on common. In the months following the election (when the survey was administered), the common variety of instances per day these functionaries used WhatsApp for political communication diminished to round fifteen, one-third as a lot as through the marketing campaign. This implies that even with out an upcoming election and related campaigns, social gathering functionaries used WhatsApp about as soon as each waking hour for intra-party communication and voter communication.

Equipped with organizational sources in addition to on-line networks that span throughout a celebration’s ranges, along with a gradual stream of content material—a big share of which is linked with social gathering occasions—events have interaction in steady messaging on social media. Through messages that they flow into amongst their functionaries and employees in addition to supporters all through the day, events periodically reinforce their partisan inclination and hold them in a state of fixed mobilization.

Conclusion

Technological change, propelled by the digital revolution, is shaping election campaigns and social gathering group in India. The BJP has been the main social gathering within the on-line house, however different events are catching up, investing in IT and social media models to construct their digital presence. These investments can definitely bear fruit, however social gathering leaders should acknowledge the boundaries of online-only campaigns. In the 2024 election—and sure past—on-line campaigning is greatest utilized as a complement, reasonably than instead or adjunct, to old school retail politicking.

In the months forward, Carnegie students and contributors can be analyzing numerous dimensions of India’s upcoming election battle—together with the function overseas coverage performs, the impression of welfare schemes, and the power of partisan ties. Keep updated with the mission here.

Acknowledgments

The creator thanks Steven Wilkinson, Sarah Khan, Susan Stokes, Milan Vaishnav, and Caroline Mallory for his or her feedback, and Ved Prakash Sharma and the survey staff from Across Research and Communications Pvt. Ltd. for his or her wonderful assist in fielding the face-to-face surveys.

Notes

¹Although Twitter was formally rebranded as X in July 2023, this text refers back to the platform as Twitter as a result of the analysis for this text was undertaken earlier than the identify change and since that is the identify generally utilized in India even right now.

²The lotus flower is the official social gathering image of the BJP.