The political parties have begun chalking out their strategies and planning their election campaigns for the Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in 2024. In order to reach the general public and convey their perspective, the Congress party has apparently chosen to approach social media influencers and YouTubers.
Taking to Twitter, senior journalist Pallavi Ghosh stated that the Congress is now reaching out to social media influencers and YouTubers to communicate its point of view to the public as the party opines that the mainstream media is not covering them.
“Congress now reaches out to social media influencers and you tubers to put its point of view as they feel mainstream media does not cover them,” Ghosh tweeted on Friday. It may be noted that Pallavi Ghosh is a veteran Congress beat journalist, she is covering the Congress party for several years.
Congress now reaches out to social media influencers and you tubers to put its point of view as they feel mainstream media does not cover them
— pallavi ghosh (@_pallavighosh) March 31, 2023
Interestingly, in April last year, poll strategist Prashant Kishor gave a presentation to Congress leadership outlining his plans to revive the party from its comatose state and push them to a strong showing in the next General Elections in 2024. The digital space, where the Congress has consistently fallen behind the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) despite seemingly attempting everything, was one of the key priority areas listed by Kishor in his presentation.
While Pallavi Ghosh in her tweet said that Congress feels that the mainstream media does not cover them, Prashant Kishor had made a similar assertion in his presentation last year. The poll strategist had claimed that the mainstream media is ‘heavily’ biased towards the ruling party adding that Congress needs to develop its own media ‘ecosystem’.
PK had also emphasized taking social media influencers on board to push its narrative. He recommended the Congress party to bring on board key district-level Facebook influencers with a minimum of 50,000 to 1 lakh followers. Use stand-up comedians’ YouTube channels to publicize party propaganda. PK also suggested that the Congress party should develop a network of Twitter influencers to boost hashtags on Twitter. Have a WhatsApp group in every village of the country. Prashant Kishor, on one hand, accused the mainstream media of being biased towards the Bhartiya Janata Party, on the other, had asked Congress to develop a network of “ideologically inclined” news portals to push the party propaganda using the digital space.
Interestingly, during Congress’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had interacted with many social media influencers and ‘independent’ journalists popular across social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
In January this year, during the Yatra, Rahul Gandhi had reportedly told a group of journalists running YouTube channels that the mainstream media does not want to listen. “They (mainstream media) have already decided what they want to do and what not as if they know everything. So there is no point talking to them,” Rahul Gandhi said.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra served as an example of Congress’s shift in communication techniques, as it was reported that the party had hired Teen Bandar, a Mumbai-based firm, to boost the Bharat Jodo Yatra’s social media presence on various digital platforms. YouTubers who primarily cover certain States or districts were enlisted for a “hyper-local approach.”
Rahul Gandhi who was recently disqualified from the Lok Sabha following his conviction in a 2019 criminal defamation case over his derogatory comments against the people with the ‘Modi’ surname, has time and again made assertions that the mainstream media has been ‘compromised’. A recent example of this was seen when the Gandhi scion lashed out at two journalists on March 25, merely because they asked some probing questions about his conviction.
No matter how strenuously, Congress leader Supriya Shrinate argues that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party’s social media fares much better than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bhartiya Janata Party, the fact is that the BJP ‘still’ manages to fare well in elections.
