2024 Elections Focus On Digital India For Votes

Social media has become an undeniable force in the political landscape of India over the last few years. With the Lok Sabha Elections around the corner, every political party in India is maximising on the potential of social media to turn the tide in their favour. From the use of memes to influencer posts, social media campaigns are in full fervour to reach and engage with voters this year! Rumor is most parties have hired professional marketing agencies to help create social media content like memes as part of the 2024 election strategy.

According to the Election Commission of India, there are almost 185 million first-time voters expected in 2024. Considering this number, reaching out to gen z voters using memes is a clever tactic on the part of political parties this year. Since memes tend to become viral quickly, they are a perfect tool for influencing opinions amongst young voters of this generation. And boy are the meme wars in full throttle!

The BJP accounts on platforms like X have been posting memes that sometimes subtly and at others, directly attack their nemesis..

While one meme from the Congress portrays Narendra Modi as Thanos with Rahul Gandhi as Iron Man, another depicts the BJP “washing machine.”

Political parties have been mobilizing thousands of influencers to woo their targeted audiences. Since the messaging comes from these influencers, it resonates a lot more with the younger audiences who are a little more skeptical of voicing from the political leaders. With the elections happening in April and May, the politically inclined posts are everywhere on most of these creator feeds. Recently, Chandni Bhagat is believed to be one of many influencers supporting BJP with her content. While she normally posts devotional videos, there are some with politics mixed in, ahead of the elections.

Ranveer Allahbadia has posted multiple interviews with BJP leaders like Smriti Irani and Rajeev Chandrasekhar on his podcast. As PM Modi presented him with the “Disruptor of the year” award at the National Creators Awards, he even playfully remarked that people will say Allahbadia belongs to the BJP “Phir toh log kahenge ye toh Modiji ki baat bata raha hai.. phir kahenge tum BJP wale ho gaye ho.” Last year, Curly Tales founder Kamia Jani posted a video podcast with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi too. With such creators having anywhere between thousands to millions of followers, it can mean big conversions for the parties during voting season.

Parties are also reaching out to voters using Whatsapp. The BJP has a “Letter from the Prime Minister” channel with 500 million users, Congress has a group where they claim citizens can interact directly with Rahul Gandhi.

Lately, a curious trend called “Click here” has taken social media platform X by storm. Since last Saturday, X has been flooded with posts featuring a simple image: a white background with the text “Click here” and a downward arrow. The arrow points to the “alt text” option, which has been around on X since 2016. But this seemingly ordinary feature has become the center of attention online. Alt text allows users to add a description to their photos, making them accessible for visually impaired people who rely on screen readers. This even got attention from the BJP, AAP and other political parties staying updated with such trends right now.

According to the Google Ad Transparency Report, the Bharatiya Janata Party is currently the top spending political party on platforms like Google and Meta. They have spent more than INR 5.37 crore on Google Ads and INR 1.3 Crore on Meta in a month. Just keeping these numbers into consideration, it is easy to see how politics on the internet is playing the biggest role in how the Lok Sabha 2024 elections are going to turn out.