Social media has influenced many aspects of our life be it education, culture, administration, marketing, business or politics. The technology revolution which is known as internet has changed the world by connecting people across the globe. Today youth is increasingly using number of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Blog and LinkedIn as platforms for communicating with friends, family and colleagues. Social media's quick development shows its influence on society. It is a crucial part of the advancement of information and communication technologies. Social media has been able to make profound impact by means of news, interaction, learning and marketing. Various news channels and tweet provide updates on significant happenings all over the world. The news quickly gets passed around the networks in ways never experienced before. People in different cities, countries and continents can keep in touch effortlessly and social media creates an opportunity to experience different cultures and exchange opinions. It has become a significant part of modern civilisation. It is changing existing information behaviour by giving users access to real-time online information channels without the constraints of time and space.

Since use of the internet has become widespread, individuals use this tool in the political realm of their lives. Printing press, radio, television and the internet have provided useful outlets to give messages out to the citizens. With each advancement, the availability of information has been expanded, making citizens better informed and making the voting process more democratic. Participating in the new technologies is imperative for politicians to stay updated and remain competitive.

With higher literacy rates, politicians have the opportunity to gain the attention of a larger audience. The development of the printing press and newspaper chains has made newspapers a prime resource for media coverage. Television entered the scene, threatening to change the entire landscape of campaigning. It was considered to be capable of providing information to an even broader audience than the previous technologies and bringing politics to the masses with greater accuracy and even faster speed. The latest wave of technology, the internet, has given political campaigning a facelift and has dramatically changed its pattern. It has changed campaigning more than the printing press, radio and television combined. American politicians have campaign websites, to raise fund online, blog, e-mail to citizens and participate in a host of other activities, all made possible by the internet. A citizen can visit a candidate's website, review that platform and then visit an opposing candidate's website and review that platform. The websites of most candidates' also allow visitors to e-mail questions, allowing citizens to communicate with the candidate. Another unique characteristic of the internet, which radio and television do not offer, is that citizens can be interactive with one another and deliver online. All this can be done inexpensively, conveniently and easily on a global scale. It increases the likelihood that citizens will become more engaged and involved but can also increase polarisation (Selvaraj, 2014). In addition to this, online fund raising is a primary motivation of candidates. Internet donors can make a donation anytime as easily as making an ATM transaction.

A closer look at the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama will reveal the role of social media in his elections. The 2008 Obama Presidential campaign made history. Not only was Obama the first African American to be elected president, but he was also the first presidential candidate to effectively use new media as a major campaign strategy. In 2008, his campaign managers used social media effectively by sending voting reminders on twitter and interacting with people on facebook. And through meetup.com, he launched virtual get-together with voters in many different locales simultaneously. When Obama announced his candidature in 2007, Twitter had just started and there was no i-phone till then. He was quick to pick up an innovative media source to make his presence felt and effectively marketed by himself. He made use of social media platforms such as Facebook and My Space to identify and communicate with supporters around the country. His 'Ask Me Anything' camapign on Reditt became one of the most threads of all times. While Obama pushed the boundaries of political campaigning online, from raising online contributions to active tweeting, his opponent John Mccain was hardly online. Again in 2012, Obama was up against Mitt Romney. While Romney did spend approximately $5 million, Obama spent over $47 million on digital campaign (Kaur and Kaur, 2013). One of the key components of the Obama's digital campaign was his website 'barackobama.com' - a social network, where volunteers could sign up, enrol their friends and neighbours and thus increase the width and depth of Obama's digital campaign. His strategy was highly successful and effective in 2008 and 2012 elections. Following him, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have entered instagram and snapchat to reach the increasing number of the younger generation who use this social media channel.

Social media is now being seriously considered by the Indian political parties as a means to reach out to the electorate. It provides platform for e-participation of voters and truly democratise the elections. According to a report India has surpassed Japan to become the world's third largest Internet user after China and United States. On June 2014, India had more than 243 million internet users as per data shared by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), which is whooping 28 per cent more compared to that of June 2013. The use of social media is significantly complex. Even though use of social media has several challenges such as security, privacy, accuracy but at the same time it provides the opportunities for sharing, collaboration, and engagement of users which is provided by the medium of social media. Social media platforms, such as twitter, facebook and youtube provide new ways to encourage citizens to get involved in political life, where elections and electoral campaigns have a central role.

The active online presence of politicians and involvement of citizens helps democracy by initiating discussions and debates and helping citizens vote for the best candidate. Further this opens the platform to more active democracy, where elected representatives are more accountable to the voters. Everyone is recognising this new and powerful medium to interact with the masses and make them participate thereby enabling better communication. Indian politicians, be it young or old have started experiencing the impact of social media in one form or the other. Now, almost every political party makes use of the social media to get its message across to the masses. Political campaigns are in no way just limited to buttons and banners for politicians to reach their constituents. The new political arena is full of commercial messages, blog posts, and hundreds of tweets. Through social media, politicians are now able to constantly display their message through endless commercials and see direct responses to their actions via facebook.

Social media played a vital role in India's 16th General Election. According to a report published in April 2013 by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the Mumbai based Iris Knowledge Foundation, Facebook users will wield a tremendous influence over the results of the polls in 160 of India's 543 constituencies (Anandapriya and Krishnaswami, 2015). During the 2004 General Election, social media usage in India was little. As per indiaonlinepages site 2014, 50 per cent of population is below 25 age group and 65 per cent is below 35 age group. This population is either studying in college or working in various companies such as IT companies, BPOs, research centres and various other sectors or are either entrepreneurs. Their busy schedule has created a virtual distance between television and radio especially with respect to acquiring or sharing information. The youth is tech-savvy and loves being connected with updated trends and topics, which is possible by using laptops, desktops or the most favourite network connected mobiles. Nowadays, facebook has 93 million users and twitter has an estimated 33 million accounts in the country.

India's 2014 Lok Sabha election is being called a social media election. During this election all political parties and candidates have extensively used social media in order to mobilise voters. The main social media giants - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and Google have played major role, for political parties and candidates competing with each other in breaking the news, spreading their message through these outlets in addition to those via classical media sources such as newspaper, radio and television (Vonderschmitt, 2012). Increasingly, politicians and elected officials are realising the power of social media for communicating political information and interacting with citizens.

In recent times, Indian political landscape has seen two major national parties, Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party fighting an online political battle. As per the report publised by India Today political parties unleashed a poll blitzkrieg never seen before in the history of independent India. Online propaganda was aggressively used against each other. Each and every medium was used to wage war of words. One tweet led the other to respond immediately. The most famous tweets from both sides were, BJP calling Rahul Gandhi as Pappu and Congress calling Narendra Modi as Feku (Wani and Alone, 2014). Both the parties tried to downplay the achievement and exaggerate the failures of each other. Both sides claim to have large number of followers. The political parties have their own websites which did not exist some years back and some of them also use other social media to interact with people. With every party having its own website and leaders being active on different media it makes the citizens feel that the politicians are within their reach. The need to take appointments or to wait for them to talk is no longer required. The leaders are accessible at the click of a button.

Even though politicians still use posters, cut-outs, fliers, and personal rallys to reach and win over voters, still with the changing trends political parties are becoming tech-savvy and realising that social media is the only way to reach out to the youth. The urban development rate is growing day by day which increases the number of facebook followers. It is said that facebook will provide a new vote bank for politicians. Candidate and a party which could leave its impression on facebook have definitely seen the positive results (Satpathi and Roy, 2011). This explains the need for a well-defined strategy specially designed for social media to make their campaigns more effective.

Taking a leaf from US President Barack Obama's campaigns, India's parties are using tools to crunch the insurmountable amounts of information social media generates. The number of smartphone users is growing in India that is how most of the country's web users go online. That's why whatsapp is being used by the BJP and the Congress to send photos, videos and messages to the voters. No other medium gives as much simultaneous mass reach as mobile phones give in India today. One of the BJP's most unique electioneering tools allows potential voters to listen to Modi's rally speeches on their phones from anywhere in India. All the prime political parties made their presence felt on the internet through their IT cells.

For 2009 Lok Sabha social media usage in India was little. Compared to the previous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections saw the maximisation of the usage of social media tools. The parties invested money on social media unmindful of the outcome. The report says that the leading parties Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress party have set this at 500 crores and 400 crores respectively (Wani and Alone, 2014). From the very beginning the BJP has the maximum presence in social media. The BJP started using social media even before 2009 general election. Narendra Modi who was the Prime Minister candidate of BJP and all other members of BJP had a very high popularity and an outreach to general public through the use of social media as compared to other parties. Narendra Modi, popularly known as NaMo, has the highest number of followers on twitter and Facebook. He has been effectively using social media to disseminate information and remain in touch with the young population of India. He has often quoted that power of social media should be harnessed to involve youth in democratic process.

Modi turned social media post 2002 or Godhra incident. As the mainstrem media began almost a hate campaign against him, Modi began depending more on the new tools to reach out people so that he could express his thoughts (Asha and Usha Rani, 2014). He has been able to strike a chord with citizens through the extensive use of Net. Modi's page 'I support Narendra Modi' and whatsapp number were launched to boost up the camapign. His website www.narendramodi.in consisted of his promotional material, audio and video prints of campaigns updates on his public rallies and daily engagements, news photographs and youtube videos. NaMO websites were created besides getting connected to the people using other tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Modi is hyper active on both these platforms. Even on the last day of the polling on May 12, 2014 he had put a long thought cum thanking note (Pande, 2015). Several other senior BJP leaders as Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitely actively tweet to a strong following. L.K. Advani of BJP has his own blog.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is a newly formed political party is very active on social media channels. It was observed that even though AAP and BJP were fighting against each other on social media but the Congress party realised its importance quite late (Narasimhamurthy, 2014). Rahul Gandhi who is one of the icons of youth in India has used almost every social medium apart from actual communication to interact with the people and especially the youth. He has used social networking websites like facebook to talk to people and prominent people as well as common man at the same time. He also writes blogs to share his views with people. Shashi Tharoor of Congress Party was one of the first politicians to start tweeting. In 2009, he showed that politicians can connect well with the computer literate masses by tweeting. Now there is hardly any major political leader who does not have account on the micro-blogging site.

Twitter had its own 'Tweeter Election' for election 2014. It is not just the candidates; even the media and citizens were using the twitter platform extensively. Fifty six million election-related tweets were gathered till the end of the election. Each of the poll days saw between 5.4 lakh and 8.2 lakh election-related tweets. The twitter results show that the most popular parties and candidates were AAP's Arvind Kejriwal, BJP's Narendra Modi, and Rahul Gandhi from Congress. The Congress and the BJP conducted Google Hangouts for its prime leaders to engage in conversation with their party workers and select group of citizens. It provided the leaders to express their mind as well as take questions.

Social media has become the new battleground for political parties to unleash their election propaganda and assimilate young, technology-friendly voters into their fold. Parties have well chalked out plans for tapping this sizeable section of vote bank, through their formidable social media cells, an indespensable part of any party's composition. The battle to conquer the throne of Delhi was not just played out through public rallies, a fierce contest for the crown was fought parallel on the virtual social media platforms between the contesting trio- AAP, BJP and Congress. In order to popularise the election campaign, Congress and AAP have made good use of social media in Punjab for recently held Assembly elections of 2017. Akalis are reportedly using a private social media to propagate their election campaign. Congress party decided to hire a professional agency the Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) run by Prashant Kishor for its election campaign.

Social media literacy is becoming a sign of forward-looking and development oriented leaders, ready to take up new challenges in a globalised world and in India. No doubt the educated population that makes use of the internet for online activities in India is less when compared with the uneducated segment of the population. But due to increasing technology and the smart phone culture spreading in rural areas, the population as a whole can bring about a revolution of sorts through social media if utilised properly. The last General Elections clearly illustrated the extent of voters' involvement in the political process through social media. The 2014 verdict and the process leading to it has shown that apathy of the young towards elections, leading political parties playing vote-bank, divisive politics and political leaders becoming smug and self serving on assuming power is a thing of past. Today, the young educated Indians backed by technology are highly ambitious, optimistic and wish to participate in the electoral process which in turn has impacted the elections scene. In many ways social media is also leaving a mark on governance.

Social media has rapidly grown in importance as a forum for political activism in its different forms. Personal communication via social media brings politicians and parties closer to their potential voters. It allows politicians to communicate faster and reach citizens in a more targeted manner and vice versa, without the intermediate role of mass media. Social media channels in India have become increasingly popular components of our younger generation's lives in today's modern society. It provides for new generation to communicate, exchange message, share knowledge, and interact with each other regardless of their distance that separates them. The social media links people across the nation regardless of differences and geographical boundaries. The compression of time and space, the convergence of media and the effects of globalisation have made the nation more interactive. New generations are feeling more comfortable in use and access of social media for communicating and building relationships online.

The advent of social media has enabled an unprecedented empowerment and engagement of the 'aam aadmi' for expressing political opinions. A positive development of social media emergence has been that the youth is talking about the political issues. Earlier the political discussions were restricted only to those who read newspapers, watched news channels or participated in discussions in nukkad of a village or clubs. But now, social networking has made the youth of India to sit up and discuss political issues. They spend time to analyse and discuss politics. They now have views on the happenings of political events and they also influence the administrative decision making. But getting the youngsters together to vote in elections and using social media as a platform to help political parties is still a pipeline dream. It may take decades in India to replicate USA in the use of social media campaigning and to influence the voters. Social media revolution in the Indian political space is real, tangible and accelerating. Though it may not bring in huge changes immediately, but still it will play an important role in creating political awareness, which in itself is a huge step forward for a developing country like India.

References

Anandapriya, R. and Sridhar Krishnaswami (2015) 'Influence and Impact of Social Media in Polity', International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities, Vol. III, Issue X, pp. 597-605.

Asha K. and Usha Rani N. (2014) 'Usage of Social Media in the 2014 Indian General Elections: A Review of Modi Factor and IT Czar's Digital Trail', Journal of Media and Social Development, Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 18-22.

Kaur, Surjit and Manpreet Kaur (2013) 'Impact of Social Media on Politics', Gian Jyoti E-Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp. 23-29.

Narasimhamurthy N. (2014) 'Use and Rise of Social Media as Election Campaign Medium in India', International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies, Vol. 1, No. 8, pp. 202-209.

Pande, Sumit (2015) Changing Paradigm: Social Media and Political Communication: A Situation in Delhi, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Satpathi, Sayantani and Oindrila Roy (2011) 'The Impact of the Electronic Media on the Modern Indian Voter: A Study of the Post Liberalisation Era', Global Media Journal, Summer Issue.

Selvaraj, M. Sudhir (2014), 'The Online Public in India: An Analysis of BJP's Online Election Campaign', Journal of Media and Social Development, Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 37-43.

Vonderschmitt, Kaitlin L. (2012) The Growing Use of Social Media in Political Campaigns: How to Use Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to Create an Effective Social Media Campaign, Western Kentucky University, Spring 5.

Wani, Gayatri and Alone, Nilesh (2014) 'A Survey on Impact of Social Media on Election System', International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 5(6), pp. 7363-7366.

Sumandeep Kaur Punia (*)

(*) Assistant Professor (Political Science), Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala (Punjab). E-mail: sumandeeppunia@yahoo.com

Table 1
Social Media Strategy of Political Parties to Win Elections 2014 with
Special Reference to BJP, Congress and AAP

Party Strategy  BJP

                Ek hi Viklap Modi
                -Vote for change
                -I Support Narendra
Facebook        Modi
Pages           -Narendra Modi for PM
                -Mission 272+
                #abkibaarmodisarkar
                #missiom272+
Twitter         #Imodi
                #BJP2014
                #Bharatiyajantaparty
                #Votefornamo

Blogging        Bjporg.blogpost.com
Google          Yes
3D
Google          Yes
Hangout
Door to         Yes
Door
YouTube         www.youtube.com/user/BJP4India
Websites        www.bjp.org
                www.bjpdelhi.org
                www.narendramodi.in
Others          Pamphlets, Billboards,
                Paper ads, TV ads, Chai
                pe Charcha, Road Show,
                Missed Call

Party Strategy  Congress

                Congress Party
                -Indian Youth Congress
Facebook        -Congress India
Pages           -Youth for Congress
                -NSUI
                #VoteforRG
                #Votefor RahulGandhi
Twitter         #Voteforcongress
                #Indiancongressparty
                #Congress2014
                #Congressagainstcorruption

Blogging        www.aiccblogpost.com
Google          No
3D
Google          Yes
Hangout
Door to         Yes
Door
YouTube         www.youtube.com/user/congresspartyindia
Websites        www.inc.in
                allindiacongress.com

Others          Pamphlets, Billboards, Paper
                ads, TV ads, Road Show and
                Hoardings

Party Strategy  AAP

                Aam Aadmi Party
                -AAP for Hope
Facebook        -India against corruption
Pages           -Arvind Kejriwal for Hope
                -IITian AAP
                #Vote for AAP
                #Arvindkejriwal4change
Twitter         #AAPpopularity
                #Thunderclap
                #AAPforhope
                #Inidaagainstcorruption

Blogging        www.aamaadmiparty.org/blog
Google          No
3D
Google          Yes
Hangout
Door to         Yes
Door
YouTube         www.youtube.com/AAP
Websites        www.aamaadmiparty.org
                arvindkejriwal.co.in

Others          Pamphlets, Road Show,
                Give a Missed Call and join
                AAP