GOPI ANEKAR | Gujarat National law University (original) (raw)

Papers by GOPI ANEKAR

Research paper thumbnail of Social media and politics: General Elections,2014

The social media has, soon after its inception, been widely used in the political sphere internat... more The social media has, soon after its inception, been widely used in the political sphere internationally. In fact, such was its extensive impact that the role of social media in international politics can be traced back to several historic events like “Occupy Wall street”, The rise of the arab spring and the M-15 movement in Spain, that the 2012 election campaigning of Barack Obama gave him the title of the “first social media president”. However, it cannot be the same in a country like India where a majority of population still does not have access to the internet, let alone social networking sites.. Yet, almost every other Indian politician has an active account on multiple platforms. Social media consulting firms are hired by the political parties in order to create the most appealing image of theirs to the “netizens” of the country. The results of the 2014 elections in May show clear majority win to the Bharatiya Janta Party with 336 seats to the NDA and one may simply not resist from observing that the Prime Ministerial candidate of the party, Narendra Modi was among those politicians who were very active on social media, having a huge base of fan following of 11.8 million on Facebook and 6.13 million on twitter. Modi had also used the Google Hangouts in 2012, which gained considerable limelight. Meanwhile, the other major candidates-Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi had a considerably lower fan following- 5.5 million and 0.3 million respectively on Facebook. While it is not the case that social media is an exclusive privilege of the metropolitan cities and the Tier I cities, we have to still consider the fact that the number of people that have access to the social media are filtered in the sense that out of the literate population, the computer literate and the ones who have access to the internet and social media, are the ones who have direct access and influence of the social media. Despite this, the role being played by the social media, especially during the times of Lok Sabha elections in May is too significant to ignore.

Research paper thumbnail of Social media and politics: General Elections,2014

The social media has, soon after its inception, been widely used in the political sphere internat... more The social media has, soon after its inception, been widely used in the political sphere internationally. In fact, such was its extensive impact that the role of social media in international politics can be traced back to several historic events like “Occupy Wall street”, The rise of the arab spring and the M-15 movement in Spain, that the 2012 election campaigning of Barack Obama gave him the title of the “first social media president”. However, it cannot be the same in a country like India where a majority of population still does not have access to the internet, let alone social networking sites.. Yet, almost every other Indian politician has an active account on multiple platforms. Social media consulting firms are hired by the political parties in order to create the most appealing image of theirs to the “netizens” of the country. The results of the 2014 elections in May show clear majority win to the Bharatiya Janta Party with 336 seats to the NDA and one may simply not resist from observing that the Prime Ministerial candidate of the party, Narendra Modi was among those politicians who were very active on social media, having a huge base of fan following of 11.8 million on Facebook and 6.13 million on twitter. Modi had also used the Google Hangouts in 2012, which gained considerable limelight. Meanwhile, the other major candidates-Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi had a considerably lower fan following- 5.5 million and 0.3 million respectively on Facebook. While it is not the case that social media is an exclusive privilege of the metropolitan cities and the Tier I cities, we have to still consider the fact that the number of people that have access to the social media are filtered in the sense that out of the literate population, the computer literate and the ones who have access to the internet and social media, are the ones who have direct access and influence of the social media. Despite this, the role being played by the social media, especially during the times of Lok Sabha elections in May is too significant to ignore.