Gujarat Election 2022: Here's how political parties use social media to run poll campaigns
The AAP has created a narrative around the party's numerous "guarantees" announced by its national convener Arvind Kejriwal during his poll campaigns in the state and is relying extensively on WhatsApp to connect with voters, a party functionary said.
FollowThousands of workers and volunteers are keeping social media pages of different political parties abuzz like a well-oiled machine to run campaigns and garner support of target voters for the upcoming Gujarat Election 2022.
While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) relies on its established network of followers on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, the opposition Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are using popular messaging platform WhatsApp extensively to reach out to voters at the grassroots level.
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It can be seen that the BJP's social media campaigns are focused on highlighting the achievements of the party-led government in Gujarat during the last two decades. Prime Minister Narendra Modi served as Gujarat Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014.
The ruling party is also tapping on the emotive issue of Gujarati pride through the newly-launched campaign "Aa Gujarat Me Banavyu Chhe (I have created this Gujarat)."
The Congress, on the other hand, is harking back to the era when it ruled the state, the contributions its governments made for development of the state and how the BJP has reportedly done nothing in its 27 years of rule.
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The AAP has created a narrative around the party's numerous "guarantees" announced by its national convener Arvind Kejriwal during his poll campaigns in the state and is relying extensively on WhatsApp to connect with voters, a party functionary said.
Speaking to reporters, Manan Dani, social media co-in-charge of the BJP, said, "We have run five campaigns so far, and we will be running a few more in the coming days. We keep changing our campaigns every week to present something new to the people."
He also said that the party started the Gujarat Election 2022 campaign around six months back with the tagline in local language - "20 Varas No Viswas, 20 Varas No Vikas" (trust and development of the last 20 years).
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The BJP has run campaigns like "Modiji Na Suwarn 20 Saal (20 golden years of Modi)", "Vande Bharat", "Aa Gujarat Main Banayu Chhe", "BJP etle Bharoso (BJP means trust)", among others, in the run-up to the election. The Gujarat BJP uses more than 15 applications in its voter outreach drives.
It can be seen that the BJP has over 35 lakh followers on Facebook, 57.8 lakh on Instagram, 1.5 million on Twitter and 45,600 on YouTube. Against this, the Congress has 7 lakh followers on Facebook, 64.3 lakh on Instagram, 1,64,000 on Twitter and 8,91,000 on YouTube. The AAP has 5.67 lakh followers on Facebook, 1.17 lakh followers on Instagram.
While the state AAP does not have a separate YouTube page, it relies on its national YouTube page which has 42.3 lakh followers.
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The AAP's social media campaigns rely heavily on volunteers consisting of young college students and professionals, said Dr Safin Hasan, social media in-charge of the party in Gujarat.
WhatsApp remains the major focus of the party for social media campaigns, he said. The Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit has a core team of 25 youngsters to look after its social media campaigns.
Voting to elect a new 182-member Gujarat Assembly will be held in two phases, December 1 and 5. The ballots will be counted on December 8.
