The use of Social Media in Indian Politics to influence the voters

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Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

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Abstract

Internet voting has become a hot topic in recent years and most governments in Europe and elsewhere are planning to experiment with it, and to implement it. Many technology development projects have been undertaken in recent years, and the technological standards are being established. At the same time, a lot of legal and philosophical issues are at stake, as the system, form and technologies for voting do have normative implications. This makes the politico-technical arena in which the development and implementation of e-democracy systems in general and e-voting systems in particular so difficult and complex. In this paper we focus on the social and social-psychological aspects of voting media, in particularly Internet voting.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION6

1.1 Introduction6

1.2 Purpose of choosing the topic:7

1.3 Research objective:8

1.4 Significance of the Study8

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW10

2.1 Politicians on Social Networking Sites10

2.2 Impact of Social Media Campaigns on Voters12

2.3 Theoretical background14

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY16

3.1 Primary Data Research16

3.2 Content of the survey and its use:16

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION18

4.1 SPSS Analysis18

4.2 Hard look25

4.3 Youth and the internet28

4.4 Web 2.0 and politics29

4.5 What went wrong?34

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION37

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Social media is now trending. With the new trend the politicians in India have also set a trend to campaign for the elections through various social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Blogs are in vogue which help the politicians to market and promote themselves especially during the times of Elections. The social media has huge impact on today's politics especially, in democratic countries. With so much 'buzzing' around social media the other important reason is that there are many youngsters joining the politics today and they know the importance of social media extremely well. And today, even older politicians are using social media actively. This is how they try to influence the voters.

Everybody has now recognized this new and influential medium to interact with the people and make them take part in the 2-way communication. Today, generally most of the politicians have their own website which wasn't the case few years back. Some of them are using social mediums very well to relate with people. Social Media has been the quickest way to communicate to the society in modern times. A recent survey carried out in the year 2009 states that the use of social media to build the brand image was 46% and to create awareness was about 60% compared to other forms of media. The social media has become a trendsetter for the people to reach quickly ...