“Anecdotal evidence is a faulty basis to form conclusions when a study like the one on ‘Social Media and Political Behavior’ by CSDS-KAS is available” said Rajdeep Sardesai, Consulting Editor of the India Today group on 11th June, 2019 at the launch of this study organized by the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation (KAS) and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) at New Delhi in the presence of more than hundred people comprising of various stakeholders that included members of academia, media, the political class and the civil society.
The first half began with the welcoming speech of Peter Rimmele, Head of KAS India. He elaborated on the importance and impact of social media worldwide in elections and pointed out that failing to deal with social media as a new tool of communication can cause massive consequences and a gap between youth and politics.
He was followed by Sanjay Kumar, Director at CSDS, who explained, that the core focus of the study remains impact on political behavior of the social media. This is why the study is relevant regardless of the recent elections. Kumar asked Shreyas Sardesai, Lokniti-CSDS to present some outcomes of the study.
One of the key findings was that BJP with Modi would have won the elections without social media. In fact, according to the study, traditional media such as television and radio is more important to voters who want to inform themselves about the political situation, than social platforms such as Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. While this presentation displayed the key results of the whole study, to give the guests an overview, Rajdeep Sardesai critically explained the political behavior of voters in his keynote. He stated that social media is important but not decisive. According to Sardesai, the detailed targeting of people both, through big data in the internet and individual targeting in rural areas, helped the BJP to succeed. Leadership, religious stereotypes and online rivalries/hate speech will affect future elections even more.
After a Q&A session, the speakers gave room for the next guests on stage.
Suhas Palshikar, Co-Director of the Lokniti programme of CSDS, then warned the guests about the influence of targeted messages, irrespective of the app though Whatsapp is, according to the study, the most successful social media app in India, whereas Joyojeet Pal, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, analyzed five specific points of the report that he found most surprising – including regionalization, trust and polarization. His insights were exemplified with information on politically extreme hashtags – especially after the Kashmir crisis. He therefore foresees a growing importance of verified profiles, as well as verified news on social media in order to establish trust and tackle issues like fake news and hate speech.
Thereafter, Supriya Sharma, Editor with Scroll, shared her worries about the so-called “filter bubble effect” on all social media apps which does not only influence the perception, but also makes you believe most of what is published and spread as information and facts. This can especially be seen through the study’s conclusion that people with high social media exposure tend to like or dislike parties more and act accordingly. According to Sharma, this can cause polarization and populism.
After these insights, the guests asked some follow-up questions to the speakers on the panel. Important questions that were raised, amongst others, concerned the meaning and relevance of language in multicultural India as well as the question on the content analysis in correlation with the quantitative information.
The discussion ended with the closing remarks by Sandeep Shastri, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Jain University, launch of the study and a round of applause.