Of late, strength of political party in social media also has become a parameter to watch, for the analysts. There have been increasing instances where strength of the party in social media is attributed for the success of the party in elections.
During US elections even though, main stream media supported hillary clinton’s party, social media by and large supported Trump’s candidature president. It is not just in America, but across the world, all political parties started acknowledging the role of social media in deciding political fortunes of the parties. Before 2014 elections , entire social media supported Modi’s candidature for prime minister. Let us see how political parties of AP are doing in social media.
TDP :
TDP was very strong in social media before 2014 elections. In fact the credit goes to people rather than the party as most of the people supported TDP voluntarily post bifurcation decision. But now TDP is not at all strong in social media compared to YSRCP and Janasena. Even though it was strong in 2014, after coming to power TDP didn’t do anything to strengthen it’s presence in social media. Some of the failures of TDP in social media
- While TDP’s political opponents were able to successfully label Lokesh as “Pappu” in the span of 3 years, social media wing of TDP could not defend or counter that.
- At one point of time, AP government led by TDP filed cases on people creating trolls against TDP in social media. There’s no doubt some people crossed limits, but filing cases sent wrong signals on the government. It is actually inability of social media wings of TDP to counter such allegations.
- Another strategic blunder by TDP social media is too much focus on “Operation Garuda” and BJP. First thing is, there are not many takers for this conspiracy theory among people, except TDP hardcore fans. Second thing is BJP has no stakes in AP. If TDP supporters think, by cornering BJP and alleging YSRCP and Janasena as puppets in the hands of BJP, that may prove costly later, if these parties suddenly change gears and target BJP too.
- TDP failure in social media is clearly evident because of its inability to counter the allegations made by YSR CP and Janasena in social media. TDP was not even successful in projecting their successes in social media.
Even though TDP has lot of support in mainstream media, many people now believe mainstream media is biased and so they are not taking as is whatever the mainstream media is selling them nowadays. Because of this, even though there is lot of noise in social media, people are trusting the news publicized by social media, especially those news that mainstream media is avoiding. So, lagging in social media is actually doing silent damage to TDP’s prospects. It is high time TDP realizes this bitter truth.
We will see in next part how YSRCP and Janasena are faring in social media compared to TDP.
-ZURAN (@CriticZuran)
