Shadow Politics: Commercial Digital Influencers, “Data,” and Disinformation in India

Abstract

This article builds on ethnographic research among an emergent group of self-styled political consultants and digital influencers in India to highlight the contours of what is defined here as “shadow politics” and its implications for disinformation research and policy. Shadow politics refers to the dual structure of “official” and “unofficial” streams of campaign organization that can integrate diverse influence actors with the party campaign system. The specificity of this form of political influence management emerges from the growing uptake for digital tools and how commercial consultants anchor “data” to the goal of “narrative building” to favor their political clients, thereby delinking data practices from the moor of political moralities. It sets the stage to draw extreme content as one data type among many to choose from. Through such data practices, a vast substratum of indirectly sanctioned influence operators is linked to the public campaign stream as a “shadow,” with incentive structures to “innovate” upon excitable and inflated content.