WhatsApp becomes ‘omnipresent’ campaign tool for parties

“WhatsApp is a part of the urban household and even the rural one - it is like the radio; it reaches a broad spectrum of people across every demographic,” declared Raj Sathyan, former IT wing secretary of AIADMK. “Twitter is the most urbanised platform. Instagram is largely for the younger generation and Facebook touches upon both rural and urban spheres,” added the son of AIADMK MLA Rajan Chellappa.

DMK’s State IT wing secretary and MLA PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan said, “While platforms like YouTube, Facebook and others might have a 30 per cent consumption by people in TN - a highly educated state - users of WhatsApp easily double that amount, even reaching 60 per cent of the State’s population.”

Claiming that WhatsApp “was the biggest social media threat to society,” Thiagarajan explained while a message posted on Twitter or Facebook has a name associated to it, and the user can be traced, WhatsApp was sheltered with anonymity. “It is an echo chamber of false information. I don’t even accuse my AIADMK opponents or PMK members in the State - but the bulk of fake news maliciously, intentionally propagated in the rest of the country through WhatsApp comes from BJP,” said Thiagarajan.

However, he said people overestimate the consequences of social media. “If a party thinks a good social media campaign could erase lost jobs and number of lives ruined by demonetisation, then that’s false. Strong communication is key, but it doesn’t necessarily have to happen through social media - it can happen through word of mouth, cinema, an essay or more,” he said.

Raj Sathyan, former IT wing secretary of AIADMK, revealed that now, the weightage of social media in overall marketing for the party’s poll campaign was 50 percent, a drastic change from 2014, where email marketing was the only online media-oriented activity AIADMK focused on.

Only in 2015, AIADMK established its IT wing and started different handles and began posting official notes with a growing digital propaganda. “We post regularly and that is reposted on various media entities. Our plan is also targeted demographic - for example, we have a special election manifesto for Madurai, so we are tailoring our campaign for Madurai according to that,” he said.