Delhi elections: Political parties slug it out on social media

New Delhi The battle to conquer the throne of Delhi is not just being played out through public rallies a fierce duel for the crown is being fought parallel on the virtual social media platforms between the contesting trio AAP BJP and CongressSocial media has become the new battleground for political parties to unleash their election propaganda and assimilate young technologyfriendly voters into their foldParties have well chalked out plans for tapping this sizable section of vote bank through their formidable social media cells an indispensable part of any partys compositionWe have a 16member core team based in Delhi who handle the social media of the party Another 55 members are operating from across the country and abroad We have 200 active volunteers too said AAPs social media coordinator Ankit LalThe three political rivals with over 26 lakhs Twitter followers and 1 crore Facebook likes between them are waging a war through hashtags tweets videos and Facebook postsEvery party has a different strategy to handle the virtual war similar to their different onfield manoeuvres The BJP with an army of 1000 volunteers are engaged in rigorous promotion of their leaders messages on various social media platformsThe volunteers mostly working in IT companies and BPOs who have taken two weeks off from work and completely dedicated themselves to the online campaign said Delhi BJPs communication cell convener Khem Chand SharmaThey promote the messages schemes and policies that are in the BJP national website and also the messages of Kiran Bedi Narendra Modi and Amit Shah he saidAAP has an astute mechanism to handle the staggering number of online political aficionados which have resulted in garnering 23 lakhs likes on Facebook and over 11 lakh followers on TwitterA holistic planned methodology is followed to spread the message of the AAP Each medium is approached separately according to their strengths and characteristicsFacebook is a broadcast medium and hence the reach people is low Too much of interaction isnt possible one can only suggest Twitter is more organic it is a more direct medium to engage in discussion debate and reasoning It is possible to change public perception through Twitter said AAPs LalNews and issues of the day are the content of AAPs tweets and the secret to their hashtags trending over other parties is attributed to the freedom allowed within the party Its a dynamic system that doesnt look up to leadership for orders Its an inclusive process where posts and hashtags are volunteers decision Lal saidThe party also has a plan in place to to deal with trolls and hate comments A sensible argument on Twitter is answered and queries are replied to For the comments beyond reasoning there is no interaction he saidFairly new to the social media forum is Congress and that is reflected in its humble number of likes and followings on Facebook 35 lakhs and Twitter 3 lakhs compared to its arch rival BJP which flaunts 73 lakh likes on Facebook and 12 lakh followers on TwitterA team of 12 people work on this front 24X7 and there are 70 volunteers dedicate around 78 hours working from their homes The entire social media campaign of Congress is volunteer based said DPCCs social media chairperson Radhika KheraThe party uses the medium to further its offline tactics of propagate its policies advertise its candidates and attack the opposition Interestingly the party shies away from interacting with virtual masses in case of malicious commentsWe report such comments to the EC or to the respective website where such comments have appeared said Khera