Why WhatsApp will be the star campaigner for Congress and BJP in Madhya Pradesh
In poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP and opposition Congress are planning mega-campaign events in which top leaders of the two parties will attempt to woo voters. But it is the smartphone through which the indecisive young voter will be targeted. Both parties are in the process of starting over one lakh WhatsApp groups through which youngsters would be targeted.
The Congress party in fact is trying to catch up with the BJP, which has the crucial first-mover advantage when it comes to social media outreach.
Both parties have now planned to target maximum possible smartphone users, starting upwards from the booth level.
The BJP, according to an IT cell insider, had managed close to 65,000 WhatsApp groups during the Gujarat elections that helped the party amplify their leaders' message during the crucial last phase of electioneering.
The party now plans to take this to the next level and is vigorously working towards starting over one lakh WhatsApp groups across the 230 constituencies in the state.
If one lakh WhatsApp groups, dedicated for spreading the party’s voice are started, each constituency will have over 430 such groups. These more than 430 groups, however, will have to pass the test of connecting to maximum voters in that particular constituency.
According to BJP's Madhya Pradesh IT cell in-charge, Shivraj Dabi, the party has set a target of starting two groups in each polling booth across the state. The party is also targeting at connecting with 20,000 voters in each constituency through WhatsApp.
The Congress, on the other hand, claims that it has already surpassed the one lakh WhatsApp group-mark and has set up at least two such groups in each of the 65,000 polling booths across the state.
According to the Congress state IT cell's planning and content in-charge Abhay Tiwari, one of these two groups at the booth level is an open group that is connected with the common public while the other is a closed group that has only Congress workers as its members.
The Congress also claims of setting up groups at the divisional level with the party’s divisional IT coordinators as group administrators. The divisional coordinators are connected with the district coordinators who, in turn, are connected with Assembly coordinators who pass on the desired message to the booth’s group administrators.
According to Tiwari, the group pyramid is designed in such a manner that a message from the top takes around 55 minutes to spread to all booth-level groups.
With both parties bombarding the smartphone user with ideology-driven content, the larger question that is being posed is about credibility and authenticity of messages.
For that, the targeted smartphone user will have to scratch his head every time there is a WhatsApp alert notification.