Tamil Nadu Political PartiesFacebook Presence & Analytics

May 7 2016Arranged in Ascending order of Ranking and

includes Tandora’ suggestion to improve rankings

FB Presence -Politics• Traditional political party membership is dwindling while social media followings

are on the rise. It's time for political parties to get used to this new type of membership -- elastic, less loyal and conditional.

• What is important is not the number of likes but the engagement of fans on page since these are going to be your word of mouth campaigners on the FB World.

• Younger people are not only less likely to be members of political parties, they also display a comparatively weaker commitment to these parties than older netizens

• Leverage Online – for Offline events, Checkins and measure ‘influencers’ contribution in a scientific manner.

• Social media and the internet is becoming the place for politics. The Oxford Internet Survey -- an annual snapshot of our internet behavior -- shows a very definite shift toward online political activism. The percentage of people who signed an online petition is expanding exponentially while those doing this offline is falling.

Up 2% WoW

UP by 5%

Up by 19%

Unchanged

Relaunched on Index

Down 2% over last week

UNCHANGED

UNCHANGED

Down 1% WoW

Up by 4% over last week

UP by 5%

Down 4% WoW

UP 1%

The Future • Our political parties will have to get used to this new type of membership -- elastic, less loyal

and conditional -- which can nevertheless be mobilized at election time within a short notice. Facebook pages groups and Twitter feeds can spread a message and mobilize voters for next to no cost.

• When in cases where elections are often won or lost based on the mobilization of voters in marginal seats, especially in the first past the post system. If I were a party hack strategist, I'd be looking to use social media in these marginal's to bring together supporters and create self-organising units of volunteers who can co-ordinate their efforts. Of course it might not represent the same degree of loyalty or reliability as the ‘offline worker’ and that might take some getting used to.

• Raising money will be harder, but activity is cheaper: and online donations using crowd funding sites might fill some of the shortfall it can also bring the much needed transparency for India’s rather opaque electoral funding scene.

• Other problems and challenges to the system lie just over the hill too: We are seeing many recent political activism and movement that has been successful in part because so much control has been ceded to local branches who cleverly leveraged social media. That distributed decision-making persuades many to give up their evenings and weekends to meet in small halls around various constituencies. But indeed It's a brave party that does that in the Indian Political Landscape.

• But ultimately, all political parties need co-ordinating machinery: they need to organize supporters, raise money and mobilize voters. The party system is struggling to fulfill that role. It might be time to think about alternatives such as social media, atleast that’s what many recent electoral success stories indicate.

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION

dindiz@gmail.comSrinivasan Venkataraghavan