·
A new study revealed
that at least 160 constituencies would have social media voters for the 2014
Lok Sabha elections.
News Report in major Newspapers dailies:
·
The study conducted
by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India said,
"There are 160 high impact constituencies out of the total of 543
constituencies, which are likely be influenced by social media during the next
general elections."
·
India has about 62
million social media users and the numbers are continually increasing.
·
The study categorises
high impact constituencies as those where "Facebook users account for over
10 per cent of total voters in a constituency."
·
However, the study
pointed out, "It is not the number of likes and tweets that are going to
determine the probability of winning of a certain candidate but the ability of
a candidate to engage with the electorate, by rising above the media clutter,
and by trying to get his or her message across to the voter directly."
·
The study based its
findings on the changing scenario over the years with greater online activities
in debates, discussion and initialisation of protests digitally.
·
The report also stated
that a total of 67 constituencies fall within the medium impact constituencies,
meaning those where "a Facebook user can influence one other voter who may
not be on Facebook."
·
There are 60 low
impact constituencies and the rest 256 are tagged under "no impact
constituencies."
·
Maharashtra has the
maximum high impact constituencies (21) followed closely by Gujarat (17).
·
Uttar Pradesh comes
third with 14 high impact constituencies followed by Karnataka (12), Tamil Nadu
(12), Andhra Pradesh (11) and Kerala (10).
·
Madhya Pradesh scores
low with nine and the nation capital has seven such constituencies.
·
While Haryana,
Punjab, Rajasthan settle with five high impact constituencies, Bihar,
Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir settle with four high
impact constituencies, the lowest.
·
However, the study
pointed out, "It is not the number of likes and tweets that are going to
determine the probability of winning of a certain candidate but the ability of
a candidate to engage with the electorate, by rising above the media clutter,
and by trying to get his or her message across to the voter directly."
Analysis of the Report
Facebook and its
impact on Loksabha Elections- 2014
The social media has been successfully influencing daily
lives of people, who are well versed with the internet technology and are part
of internet virtual society. It has helped in information dissemination,
community formation, relationship building and influencing decisions of people.
Based on its influence and a survey done by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and the
Internet and Mobile Association of India, the newspapers published a surprising
story about Social Media’s role in 2014 Loksabha elections. According to this
report, Social Media, specifically, facebook will impact upon 160 Loksabha
constituencies’ results in 2014.
The report divided Loksabha Constituencies based on facebook
impact, into High, medium, low and no impact Constituencies.
The report is based
on the following premise,
1. The city of work or place of
work mentioned in facebook profile, is similar to the city of electoral roll of
a person
2. There are no fake facebook
accounts and there is a single account per user
3. The users get influenced by
facebook posts, comments and ads
4. Polling behavior of people
will be affected by the facebook information
5. Benefit of facebook in
geotargeting and demographics targeting
6. Facebook ads will help
political parties in reaching out their votebank in economical way,
The correctness of
above premises are discussed, as below,
1.
The
report analyse the impact of facebook, based on number of facebook users in a
particular constituency. This information has been gathered with the help of
user profiling. The user mentions place of birth or current location in his
facebook profile. These two places may be same or different depending upon
whether user migrated from his place of birth or not.
Secondly, this place can be
different from the place where user enrolled in an electoral roll. This
mismatch, definitely will change report’s outcome. There is more likely possibility
of such mismatch.
2.
Apart
from actual facebook accounts, there are
I.
User-
misclassified,
II.
Unwanted,
III.
Duplicate
and
IV.
False
accounts.
User-misclassified accounts
are the one where users have created personal profiles for a business,
organisation, or non-human entity such as a pet.
Undesirable accounts,
represent user profiles that are determined as intended to be used for purposes
that violate the site's terms of service, such as spamming.
The duplicate accounts are
created by single users for various purposes and
false account don’t reveal
true information.
As per facebook-2012 report,
the percentage of four category of accounts is meaningfully lower in developed
markets and higher in developing markets.
In India the existence of
four category of accounts in the total 6.5 million facebook accounts, is much
higher. The report’s outcome may get affected, if you remove all four category
of accounts from its calculations.
3.
Report
is also based on the premise that the facebook activities may affect cognitive minds.
People on facebook do various activities viz. liking the posts, sharing of
various posts, commenting on activities, posting status updates, uploading
photos and videos, events making etc. These activities majorly depend upon
facebook habits of general people.
Various reports proved that people
use Facebook to fulfill two basic social needs: the need to belong and the need
for self-presentation.
In
India, facebook is more often than not is used as a tool of interacting and
socializing. The attention span of people is also very subjective. Therefore,
how much political comments and posts affect polling behavior of facebook users,
is a debatable question.
4.
Polling
behavior of people in India, is dependent on various socio-economic factors.
The primordial identities play a major role in it. Though political
advertisements and information in the surrounding do play a role in decision
making, poll campaigning and political information dissemination through social
media and its role is not yet proved. Till date people get attracted to the new
posts, only if it is attractive and unique, otherwise, general people have a
tendency to overlook or pass the same. This tendency may hardly have any impact
on the polling behavior of people. For the impactful campaigning therefore,
politicians and political parties need to carry out effective, tailored social
media strategy which would be unique in itself to catch the eyeballs and to
make the recall value for the same.
5.
Facebook
is very effective in geotargeting and demographics targeting. Facebook ads
definitely help in reaching out to the correct votebank. But the precondition
for the same, is people have mentioned correct entries into their profiles.
Again, it is necessary to understand that facebook users demographic ranges
roughly from 10 year kid to 70 years old. Many active users in metros (high
impact constituencies), are school and college going students, who rarely
bother about political developments in the surrounding. This youth uses
facebook with a purpose of connecting with the friends and communities.
Further, the report, mentions
160 high impact constituencies are those where the number of Facebook users is
more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last Lok Sabha election,
or where Facebook users account for over 10 per cent of total voters in a
constituency. This very premise, neglect 18 years as the adult suffrage in
India.
6. Facebook
ads though help in enhancing likes of a page, suffer from few drawbacks,
a) One click
on Facebook ad help in getting one like to promoter’s page. This like is not a
guarantee for users’ attention towards promoter’s updates. People may unlike
the page, if they don’t like activity on the page. Therefore what matters is
the content, activity and interaction through the page, which inturn is an
effect of proper facebook page management .
b)
Advertisements
Facebook ads are paid based on cost
per click (CPC) or cost per impressions (CPM). Facebook will usually recommend
that you bid higher than that during the pricing phase of ad creation. If other
advertisers bid more, their ads are more likely to be shown. This puts smaller
paid and niche advertisers at a disadvantage.
c)
Negative Content
The posting of negative comments and
content on promoter’s facebook page needs constant monitoring and effective
page management work.
d) It’s difficult to catch
people’s attention –
People are so busy on Facebook that they often don’t pay any attention to the
ads. They are far more interested in chatting to their friends.
Looking into all above
arguments, it is necessary to relook at “ Social
Media and Lok Sabha Elections” report and think before considering the outcomes
of the report which has been brought out with a purpose of proving the clout of the social media … and if Facebook users will have
an impact, if they so choose.!
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