The 2014 Indian elections on Twitter: A comparison of campaign strategies of political parties

Abstract

Twitter, a popular social media platform, has surfaced as a dominant political communication and campaign tool across Western democracies. However its role in politics, particularly in electoral campaigns, in economically developing democracies with low internet accessibility, is largely unknown. This study conducts an investigation of Twitter’s use as a campaign tool during the 2014 Indian general elections, which was the country’s first experiment with using social media for political campaigning. We present a multi-level manual and computer-aided analysis of 98,363 tweets posted by eleven political parties during the two-month run up to the elections, to present the topical, functional and interaction strategies of their Twitter campaigns. This analysis is complemented by a macro analysis of electoral outcomes’ relationship with first-time voter population and internet accessibility information at the state level. Our findings suggest that the new-and-upcoming parties used Twitter for self-promotion and media validation, while established parties used it to supplement their offline strategies. It is also observed that the winning party’s electoral success is significantly associated with their use of Twitter for engaging voters, the large population of first-time voters and levels of internet accessibility. The implications of these findings and the limitations of the study are discussed.