Online Campaigns, the New Tool for Political Parties to Woo Netizens

Bangalore: Which strategy have the Indian politicians and political parties not applied to win the hearts of their voters? There are hardly any. With the advancement in the information technology, now the political parties are not just confined to their political campaigns through rallies, rath yatras, TV appearances, full page advertisements, posters and pamphlets but have also employed the new media platform like the internet and social networking sites for the upcoming 2014 Lok Sabha elections, as reported by Kim Arora for Times Of India.

Most of the political parties have their own IT cells in order promote their party manifestos and contribute through the online medium. Recently, the netizens of the country were the most targeted masses through digital medium as the political parties believe it will easily help garner voters, mostly the youth. Arvind Gupta of BJP's IT cell said, "We've built a strong base of volunteers through our online outreach, who are well-informed about the party policy and its activities. Our social media guidelines, which are up on the party website, were crowd-sourced," reported TOI.

The digital age has changed the game and this seems evident even among politicians, as they are involved in their digital campaigns. Kumar Vishwas of Aam Aadmi Party said "Not just our central team, even our candidates have online support groups they interact with regularly. When a five-year-old's rape case wasn't being registered by the police, the candidate from the area got people together with a single message. They picketed outside the police station until an FIR was filed."

Also Read: New Media Wing To Publicise Government Programmes

Also Read: Stop Corruption! Website Helps Citizens Expose Bribe-Takers