The battle for Delhi on Facebook

Often I am told that the internet and social media platforms have removed information asymmetry. Some have complained to me that this has created a demand-driven aspirational society, putting immense pressure on the performance of politicians, public sector and the government, though all acknowledge that this demand driven culture is not going away.

In his book, The End of Power, Moisés Naím, outlines three types of revolutions: People want "more"; secondly "mobility" of people and ideas has ended captive audiences; and finally "mentality" – development of aspirations and values of individuals are being shaped in a way that nothing can be taken for granted anymore. These are the three revolutions that leadership and politics will have to increasingly negotiate, engage and persuade in order to remain relevant.

Traditional approaches are hardly compelling in dealing with complex needs of a society in churn. Delhi threw up all these challenges in the recent elections and we saw it play out in conversations on Facebook. With more than 12.15 million people out of Delhi’s 13 million registered voters online, the internet population was a large voting bloc in this year’s election. We saw trends and campaigns start to come into focus starting on January 1, 2015. Much like they did in the December 2013 Delhi elections, the Aam Aadmi Party had a much stronger ground game. Its street power merged seamlessly with its campaign strategies on Facebook. Their flash mobs, the Delhi Dialogue all became content for online engagement, participation and generating more volunteers. The AAP posted more than 1,000 posts on their page from January 1 of which 78 per cent were photos of their jansabhas and other campaign activities. 15 per cent were short videos of speech highlights by Arvind Kejriwal, Kumar Vishwas and other leaders and crowd sourced videos from volunteers pledging support for the AAP campaign. “Velfie with Kejriwal” was a buzzy, youth-centric innovation launched by the AAP to tap into the first-time 11 lakh strong youth voters.

In contrast, the BJP relied on more conventional methods of big format rallies, traditional advertising and less online engagement.

In this period, the BJP made 196 posts. Of these 56 per cent were photos of campaign events and 20 per cent were links of speeches and statements by its leaders. This was a sharp departure from the energy and online organisation seen during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress party’s campaign did the least amount of activity with 123 posts in this period, 97 per cent of which were photos.

In terms of post engagement by the community on Facebook, the AAP led with 27.8m engagements; the BJP 8.4m and the INC 5.1m.

From January 10, there was an eruption of hashtag wars and the AAP launched counteroffensives to the BJP campaign. The AAP countered the January 10 rally of the prime minister with #DelhiwithKejriwal. In the next few days, the AAP ran a campaign #BJPPowerCompanyNexus. This was soon followed by the BJP’s announcement of Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate. The AAP countered with #AAPkiDilli and #BediVsKejriwal. The Aam Aadmi Party used Facebook as a social listening tool and rapidly adjusted its campaign messages and outreach. The AAP campaign was like a new start-up causing creative disruption and creating more impact with limited resources.

Finally, in the penultimate week of the campaign till polling day the Facebook sentiment data showed a ten per cent positive lead of the Aam Aadmi Party over the BJP.

As we get more connected, we will see democracy dispense, as Plato said, "Equality to both equals and unequal alike". The AAP's success shows that no party – no matter how popular – can take the electorate or a good online strategy for granted.