Use of New Media for Communicating Political Messages by Two Indian National Parties

Abstract

Research about the use of new media has grown intensely, especially in the past few newlineyears, relating to different subjects. The impact of digital media is seen by the entire newlineworld. Whether it is the revolution of Arab Spring in the Middle East in early 2011 or newlinethe election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, in the last few years, new newlinemedia has emerged as one of the powerful tools for political communication. newlineIndia, itself has witnessed the use of new media during 2014 Lok Sabha election. In short, newlineit became a battleground for the political parties. Then onwards, we have many other newlineinstances where political parties are engaging with the voters through new media even at newlinethe grass root level. newline2017 State Legislative Assembly elections of UP, Goa, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, newlineGujarat and Punjab were a good example where new media has been used thoroughly by newlinethe political parties. This study was carried out to understand that how new media e.g. newlineWebsite, Facebook, YouTube and Website were used in State Legislative Election of newlineIndia in 2017 election campaigning period in order to put forth their agenda to form newlinepublic opinion, and as a result what are the issues being discussed during that period of newlinetime. A quantitative content analysis was done on two national political parties Website, newlineFacebook pages, Twitter handles and YouTube channels during the whole election newlinecampaign period to understand the usage of new media among parties during the election newlinecampaign. The study also attempts to study the structure and functioning of IT cells of newlineboth the parties.