Will Modi's Cyber Popularity Prove Beneficial in the 2014 Elections?

Bangalore:  At a time where social media is spreading like a wave, Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi has made himself a brand with high levels of engagement and fan following on social networking sites. While other Indian politicians need to be more net-savvy, Modi has always been popular on social media.

Modi has yet again emerged the most followed Indian politician on Twitter. He outpaced Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in terms of fan following.

Modi is recorded to have 18, 26,164 fans, while Tharoor has 18, 21,799 fans and takes the second place on the list of most followed Indian politicians on Twitter. As per the latest count Modi has fans about 4365 more than Tharoor. He is also noted to have a high level of engagement on his Facebook page.

On the other hand Aam Aadmi party leader Arvind Kejriwal has outpaced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with 6, 66,971 followers. Singh took the sixth position with 6, 36,066 fans. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj rounded off the tenth place with 521,808 followers.

Further, Modi recently took over as the head of BJP’s national election campaign committee and BJP claims that Modi's high ranking on the on the cyber popularity graph  is an indication of his increasing popularity ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. This has certainly led to much debate whether social media could prove an effective tool in mobilizing support for Modi in the upcoming elections.

What the 2014 elections have in store only time will tell, but it’s certain that Modi has selected the best to spearhead his election campaign on the Web, ahead of the national elections. Technology entrepreneurs Rajesh Jain and BG Mahesh are on the forefront to drive Modi’s social media campaign.

Jain wrote in a post “BJP’s approach needs to be to work towards creating a wave in 2014 – across the country, and especially in the 330-350 seats where the BJP is competitive,” reported WSJ’s India Real Time.