Political Parties are finally waking up to concept of Social Media and the Web. Its not just Advani (BJP) or the Congress but AP based Loksatta are the latest ones to jump on the Social Media bandwagon by releasing an application on Orkut.
Created by corners.in, the application is definitely not the best one around. 4 advertising units on the app make you wonder as to what they want to achieve. They have Discussion boards and galleries for photos and videos currently.
This is definitely not the last of the SNS apps that we’ve seen and I’m sure BJP and Congress have Orkut and Facebook in their plans. They should be using the apps to build communication, to know what the people want and to get them to vote! It would be nice to see more politicians like Sanjay Nirupam take up blogging.
The online space in India is where the educated audience can be found, but many of these are too ignorant or too lazy to go out and vote. They’ll be the first to blog about Terrorist attacks and also blame the Government…but they also need to be the first ones to vote. The youth is online, the youth needs to vote and the political parties are realising this too.
Taking a leaf from Obama’s book seems like a step in the right direction. However, the real challenges in social media tend to be:
1. Understanding the audience
2. Listening to the audience
3. Providing your views and actively soliciting feedback
4. Respond to the feedback and act on it as soon and as much as possible.
5. Keeping the dialog open and respectful.
It’s imperative to recognize that the social media unlike the brick-and-mortar press media is a different sort of animal. The audience in social media could be the ones who will be directly impacted by what the politicians say and do, so there could be a very immediate and negative reaction to what is being said.
The press tends to pass the message from the politicans to the public and not the other way around, also, they are seldom allowed to express their views on a news story (except in the editorial sections). The social media, on the contrary, was meant for people to express their views openly and provides the means to that end.
When some touchy topics are discussed, some powerful sneezers (recognized bloggers etc.) could kick up significant dust in a very short span of time. Just like some bloggers were arrested in many different countries for either reporting stark realities or expressing strong discontent against their goverments, it is important that there be no backlash when these political parties engage social media for their political cause.
The audience who engage in a dialog with their political parties also should realize that their own identities are public. Even if they use cryptic user names they can be tracked through their IP address. So, just lashing out at somebody thinking one’s identity is anonymous, is misplaced. Like the old adage – “If you can’t write it and sign it, then don’t say it”, this is extremely relevant to the social media.
Last but not the least, I think the social media platform and the application providers (like corners.in) might also have to be very careful in creating the applications or moderating their use lest they get caught up in the eye of the storm should something really significant were to happen.
Well, all said and done, social media and political parties is the seasonal flavour and let’s hope its a good one!