Parties switch to digital canvassing as TN gears up for urban local body polls

With the urban local body elections, scheduled for February 19, just around the corner, S Meenalogu, 48, a DMK candidate contesting in ward 46 in Coimbatore Corporation is spending anxious days planning and executing her poll campaigns.

Despite being a four time councilor and a known face in the locality, she spends eight hours a day visiting every household in the locality, discussing local issues and urging voters to give her a chance to resolve them by electing her as the councilor. Besides, every day after 11 pm, she spends about an hour uploading the videos and images of her door-to-door campaign in her personal social media accounts and WhatsApp groups. For she believes it would help her to reach out to more voters, especially those residents who work in other cities.

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“I have always focused on doing door-to-door campaigns because I believed that it is important to have a good rapport with the voters. But, in the present situation, it is not just enough. We had to put in a lot of effort to reach out to voters and one of the easiest ways to do that is through digital campaigning. Because most of them are on social media and are quite active,” said Meenalogu.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has limited the scope of physical campaigning for elections, political parties are extensively tapping in the potential of digital media to reach out to voters.

Political leaders say, the initiative has been helping them to communicate their messages effectively to a larger number of voters.  For the purpose, they have formed multiple teams and are coming up with unique videos, memes, statements and images every day.

“We have been focusing on digital campaigning for quite some time now. We have also conducted a region-wise social media audit to understand which platforms are widely used in each district. Even though WhatsApp is considered as the fastest penetrative application and is popular across the state, each district has its own set of platforms. For instance, one could reach a larger set of audience through Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp in Chennai. Whereas in Vellore, Facebook is the fastest penetrative application,” said Kovai Sathyan, AIADMK spokesperson and the Chennai regional secretary of the party’s IT wing.

Explaining that they have been working to create at least 67,000 WhatsApp groups in the state to reach out to the voters at booth level, he said that they have more 30,000 active WhatsApp groups and they have succeeded in creating the groups at district, village panchayat, town panchayat and panchayat union level.

He said, the party has been using all forms of mediums to send messages to the public and have been creating issue-specific content. “As the Opposition party, we mainly focus on checking the information announced by the state government, failure of the current government and other current issues,” he added.

Social media helps us to take the messages of party leaders to the public across the state, he said, adding that party cadres would go live on social media platforms whenever party leaders give speeches or address the public in a particular district.

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 “As digital campaigning has become as important as traditional campaigning, we have created multiple local teams to work with the candidates in addition to the state-level team. The team would profile the candidates and present their manifestos in different formats using graphics and slides,” said CTR Nirmal Kumar, president of Tamil Nadu BJP IT and social media wing.

Explaining that the team would accompany the candidates to all the places, he said it would go live whenever the candidates give speeches and record and circulate any heart-warming moments that take place during the campaigning. This is being done even as the state-level team concentrates on creating content about central government schemes and both will be shared on all digital platforms, he said.

“The duration of the videos are generally not more than 40 seconds and the time limit is set based on the concentration level of the public. People don’t have patience to watch anything more than that. Also, short videos are easy to push on multiple platforms and have a good reach,” he explained.

Vouching for digital campaigning as an effective mode of poll canvassing, he said it not just helps in reaching a large number of people at a time but also influences them positively.

“With limited time period, it becomes difficult to spend quality time with each voter and explain to them our manifestoes. But, in case of digital campaigning, we could be assured that the message reaches them crystal clear,” he added.

“In the present situation, digital campaigning is the only way to reach out to the people. We have managed to connect to more than 3 lakh people in a single event virtually. Chief Minister MK Stalin spoke to them in a video call and the message was conveyed easily. Otherwise, such a mass gathering would have been a tedious and riskier task in the present day situation,” said a DMK leader.

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He said they have also been using club house and Twitter spaces to interact with the supporters regularly instead of holding an in-person meeting.

However, party leaders said that it has its own limitations as well. A CPI(M) leader said, “The social media platforms are also used to circulate disruptive messages and to polarise the public. It has also become important for the political parties and the public to be aware and be vigilant.”