Interview | Sanjeev Singh Decodes the Impact of Social Media on Elections

"The question we tried to answer was — Can social media engagement translate into more votes for politicians?"

In this interview, journalist Sanjeev Singh, who recently wrote a book titled The Online Effect: Decoding X to Predict Election Outcomes speaks to Saptarshi Basak of The Quint on the impact of social media in today's politics.

An excerpt from the book can be found here.

What is the book about? What are the questions that you have tried to answer?

Thank you for having me. Firstly, this book is a culmination of a lot of inquiry and inquisitiveness we have as people who follow social media. We follow politicians and since we are the largest democracy in the world, you cannot really stay away from politics.

The idea germinated around 2010-12 when social media was just coming into the country in a big way. Twitter had arrived, and we saw many early adopters like Shashi Tharoor and Narendra Modi jumping on the bandwagon. At that time, there was a general sense of distrust and apprehension about where this was heading. The question that always haunted me was how this change would impact the way we do things.

Until then, the traditional method was that the media acted as a funnel political parties or politicians would communicate via certain media, which would then filter and relay the message to the audience. Milind Deora, then a young minister in the UPA government, told me, “Boss, now with social media, you guys will have to find ways and means of being relevant because this gives us the opportunity to put our side of the story without having you in the middle.”

So, that's where it all started — trying to decode how to study social media and the way communication is done by political parties and politicians in a scientific manner, which ultimately led to this book.

To put it simply, the question was — -Can social media engagement translate into more votes for politicians? Is it an enabler? Can it help them convert social media users into people who believe in those politicians' ideologies, which in turn reflect in the votes? That was the premise of the entire book.

And what about the scientific methodology of your research?

People used to talk about the effect of social media, but nobody actually quantified it, which is where the scientific part comes in. It's very easy to make a statement or a claim, but you need to back that argument with facts and figures.

The bigger challenge for me was to evaluate the impact of this medium. It took me three to four years to collect all the data. The scientific method we used involved a six-month duration for certain political parties and leaders. We mapped the number of tweets they posted and the traction they received. Based on this, we created a statistical formula to evaluate their results.

What we found was a very strong correlation between the number of retweets, support, or traction that political parties and politicians received on Twitter and their vote share in elections. There is a strong correlation between engagement and vote share. Although the study was conducted for 10 states, we had corresponding data points for only seven states. The statistical formula, which we called the Singh-Srivastava Vote Predictor Model, accurately predicted the current or closest vote share in six out of those seven states. We were able to determine, based on Twitter engagement, which party was likely to get a better vote share than the others.

So, would it be correct to say, contrary to what we often hear, that we should consider social media engagement to understand what is going on at ground zero?

You're absolutely right. That's what the book essentially is — a myth buster that social media, especially Twitter, does not necessarily reflect the mood of the people, and I'll tell you why. Firstly, Twitter is a platform used to disseminate real-time information. It's used by politicians and political parties globally because anyone wanting to know what's happening in the world right now would come to Twitter.

Secondly, in my study, I've included a variety of states. For instance, I have developed states like Maharashtra and Haryana, as well as states like Jharkhand, which has a sizeable tribal population. There are parts of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with significant tribal populations. I've also studied Telangana and Chhattisgarh. This broad umbrella covers states from the north, south, east, and west, including developed states, less developed states, states with high tribal populations, and states with high manufacturing levels.

There's a good mix of states. In all these states, the correlation showed six out of seven times. I would say that this book will go a long way in busting the myth that social media and Twitter are only for a certain kind of people and not for the general population.

Is there a disparity in how political parties instrumentalise social media? Or is it a level playing field, despite the ruling party having far more resources?

What social media has done is democratise data to a large extent, but there's always a first-mover advantage.

Early adopters, like Narendra Modi and the BJP, leveraged this advantage effectively. Rahul Gandhi, for instance, moved onto Twitter much later, initially using a handle called "Office of Rahul Gandhi" before eventually becoming "Rahul Gandhi."

In 2014 and 2019, the BJP significantly benefited from this early adoption. In 2014, no one anticipated the critical role social media would play. Once Narendra Modi came to power, he empowered all ministry spokespersons to use all platforms.

By the time other parties caught on, the 2019 elections had already come and gone. Now, there's an overexposure. Other parties think that gaining more traction on social media will benefit them, but they fail to realise that it takes two hands to clap. Your online social media strategy must complement your offline electoral strategy. Unless both are in sync, no party can focus heavily on one. Many parties are skewed more towards social media and other platforms than having boots on the ground.

Between WhatsApp and Twitter, which one is more useful for information dissemination and more lethal for disinformation?

WhatsApp operates in a closed group, meaning you need to have people on your contact list. This makes it very tough to publicly track the flow of information on WhatsApp, making it a double-edged sword. You can use it to pass on information you want to keep confidential or limited to a certain group, but it’s also easy to disseminate incorrect information. This has caused problems, as we've seen with incidents of mob lynching many years ago, fueled by viral WhatsApp forwards.

This led WhatsApp to implement limits on the number of forwards and to indicate when a message is being forwarded. While these checks and balances are now in place, the fear still remains. On Twitter, if I post misinformation, it's on a public platform, so someone can easily call me out and say the information isn't correct. In the last election, if any news or misinformation was put out, the chances of someone calling it out were much higher because Twitter is a public platform where information is disseminated in real-time. This is in contrast to WhatsApp, which is used more in closed groups or with a select group of people.

How can the Opposition use social media better to its advantage?

Because the BJP had the first-mover advantage, they didn't face much competition initially and were able to scale up much faster. Now, the problem is that there's so much competition and so many social media platforms available that you need to keep users engaged constantly. To do this, you need to provide content that captures their interest.

Here's how the chain works: You put out content on social media, and users check it out. If they like it, they keep coming back. Once you establish a connection between your content and the user, you can slowly guide them to think in the direction you want. However, maintaining this engagement has become tougher.

For example, Rahul Gandhi did very well on social media, especially on Twitter. In 2018 and early 2019, his engagement was far better than Narendra Modi's. But when it came to the final stretch, Rahul Gandhi's engagement dipped, and Narendra Modi's shot up. This shows the importance of momentum in engagement.

It's like the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL. They played very well initially, winning the first six or seven matches, but as they moved closer to the finals, their performance plateaued and declined. Similarly, in the ODI World Cup, India won all the matches but lost in the finals. The opposition needs to keep in mind that just because they are doing well on social media, it doesn't mean the BJP can't bounce back when it matters. Additionally, your online social media strategy must complement your offline strategy. These are the two crucial aspects to consider.