This book provides a conceptual toolkit to understand the changing technologies and dynamics of political campaigning in India. Examining political campaigning and party strategies across many Indian states, with special attention to regional politics, histories, cultures, social and technological contexts, the book discusses the potential impacts of campaign strategies on electoral outcomes. Political campaigning reached a tipping point with millions of social media users engaging online with family and friends, political issues, parties and candidates in India’s 2019 parliamentary election. Although India’s political parties had been working with consultants and professional advertising agencies for decades, by 2019, millions of first-time voters as well as older voters were microtargeted with campaign messaging by parties and their affiliates, including frequent misinformation from unknown sources supporting one party or another. Filling a key gap in political communication research on election campaigns in digital India, the chapters in this book capture how political campaigning is important for the electoral fortunes of political parties in India’s diverse regions and states. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and practitioners in political communication, public administration, and political consulting, as well as anyone interested in data-driven political campaigning. It will also be an invaluable reading for those interested in South Asian studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

For a long time, people remained unenthusiastic to discuss political conditions, but for the past 4-5 years, citizens have been successful in breaking the old conventions. Social media sites have gained popularity even to promote political aspects, and the political leaders have used this. The first popular experimentation in this regard was done by the BJP Government who mainly focused on social media campaigning during the 2014 elections. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister, was one of the candidates in 2014 elections representing BJP and took use of these social media sites to grab the minds of youth. Dr. Raj Padhiyar with his extensive experience in Digital Marketing closely analysed How BJP government took a turn from the age-old tradition of campaigning in rural areas and changed their focus to the Indian Youth. This move was inspired from the USA, where Barack Obama in 2008 took to social media to reach out to the public and was successful. This book coveres all secret tricks/techniques used by various political parties in india & their IT cell to reach out to their target voters & influence their mindset. The Book mainly covers the impact of Social Media in Indian Politics with light to International Politics. With 2019 Loksabha election around the corner, Many graphs and diagrams are included to make it interesting. The concepts are written in a reader-friendly manner with the hope that the concepts dealt reaches the minds of the readers and helps them gather information.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.

Is Narendra Modi one of the most successful brands of our times? Was the historic AAP victory in Delhi actually a fluke? How do Indians vote and what influences them? Swinging the Mandate is a first-of-its-kind book on political campaign management in India. Prof Dheeraj Sharma, chair of marketing at IIM Ahmedabad, and Narayan Singh Rao discuss how sophisticated campaign management strategies have been utilized in recent elections in India. The book offers excellent case studies from the historic general elections of 2014 and the landslide victory of AAP in the 2015 Delhi elections. It also gives examples of some hard-fought elections in Europe and North America to demonstrate increasing use of principles of marketing and management in campaign management. Armed with comprehensive research and interesting case studies, this accessible book reveals how star campaigners are built, what the marketing mix for a political party looks like, and how elections are won in India.

This book explores the forms, patterns, and trends in political communication in India in the twenty-first century. It underlies the influence of context in political messaging laying bare its complex, overlapping, and multidimensional structures. The volume: Examines how political decision-making is shaped by media — through political speeches, community opinion leaders, and formal and informal public conversations. Explores a range of political communication channels— from community radio to social media. Presents an overview of the problems associated with message designing and message dissemination through communication channels in a political setting. Highlights how political communication impacts critical aspects of democracy and governance and goes beyond mere rhetoric. A comprehensive work on the production, diffusion, transmission, and impact of information in a political environment, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, governance, democracy, media and communication studies, journalism, cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

Transforming India into a digital state has been an objective of successive governments in India. However, the digital, by its very nature, is a capricious, multi-dimensional entity. Its operationalization across multiple sectors in India has highlighted the fact that the digital compact with publics in India is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, devices such as mobile phones have enabled access and efficiencies, and on the other, they have increased the scope for surveillance capitalism and the expansion of governmentality. The digital is at the same time a resource, commodity, and process that is absolutely fundamental to most if not all productive forces across multiple sectors. As a part of the Media Dynamics in South Asia series, this volume explores the making of digital India and specifically deals with the contradictions of an imperfect democracy, internal compulsions, and external pressures that continue to play crucial roles in the shaping of the same. Mindful of the key roles played by political economy and context and based on conversations with theory and practice, it makes a case for critical understanding of the digital embrace in India.

Elections have always been festive occasions in liberal democracies, and India is no exception. Media becomes one of the most important players in elections because of its power of reach and agenda-setting. From one government-controlled television in India in 1984, to hundreds of news channels owned by various interest groups, a burgeoning print media, the coming of the social media and the tiniest and most 'lethal' of mass reach weapon, the mobile phone-all these have changed the way elections are now contested! The power of mass contact through rallies and public gatherings, reinforced by the event-driven media channels and the power of digital media to reach out to the young audience, has redefined electioneering in India. When India Votes looks at the theoretical underpinnings of the relationship between democracy, mass media and election campaigning, as well as representative campaigns of the last three decades of the two major players, viz. the Congress and BJP.