Powerful Impact Of Social Media On Forthcoming Elections In India

webOdoctor claims to be the mirror of social outreach and trends in every aspect   trying to bring you with profound and prolific insights. As the best digital marketing company in India, this time we have taken a more analytical study on – What’s going to happen in our forthcoming elections under the cover of social media?

 Nowadays, readers get their news from social media and there is a lot of misinformation online. But the media also needs a platform to strike a balance between readers and news or organization.

There was a period in time when media companies were very naive when it came to social media. As news organizations have come to place, they are more cautious not to rely too much on these platforms. There is a need to keep the relationship between readers and news organizations in our own hands. But a lot of organizations have gone ahead and really teamed up with Facebook and that’s a big problem.

Now, there is a shift because media companies have started building up other subscription models; consumer business models that are dependent directly on the readers so that they can get news without having to rely on social media.

Do you think Social media favors a typical ideology?

There is a trope in almost every debate that right-wing extremism is really good at using social media. This is because these right wing parties and their ideologies’ purpose is to stoke fear. That’s part of their political programme. Although these platforms are not designed for a specific ideology, they fit the right-wing ideologies very well. If a left-wing party began to ride on fear that would also work.

Sometimes Tech Giants change the algorithms and tell us a little bit about what the purpose was behind the changes. All we can do is study and research the impacts or effects of social media. One of the big problems of these times is that there is no way to concretely know what these algorithms promote and throw on individuals’ newsfeeds. It’s all a black box.

The problem lies in the companies’ business models as they need users to keep coming back so that they can collect as much data from each one of us and then sell back advertising. The most efficient way to get users to come back is to give them content that is very high on emotion and that is often content that drives fear, hatred and mistrust. So, it seems to be this new public sphere is not neutral, rather it elevates a certain kind of content that hinders discussions.

We are in very early stages with technology right now. What we need is strong consumer interests, politicians need to know and understand the issue more deeply.

The idea of the politicians and lawmakers was really to level the playing field and to give power back to the consumers. It was meant to curb the power of the big tech companies. So we need to get into minute details because internet has become a threat to democracy.

Let us wait for the fever to get down and observe the social media marketing analytics in the domain of elections or politics at large.