ABSTRACTPoliticians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.Mark TwainSocial networking sites have been used by governments to involve citizens in decisions making, and by civil society to engage people in specific issues. The rise of internet in the early 1990s has led to the increase in the world networked population. The networked population has greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech and a better ability to undertake united action. Social media has gained importance with the rise of youths in India. As they are the one who used internet the most in India. In 2014 general elections social media have been also used to broaden the political participation by helping citizens to communicate with their representatives and with each other.

This year social media have been used as an agent for the campaigning of elections through Facebook, Twitter, Google +. Arguably 2014 elections have been different from the previous ones; created so much buzz among the youngsters. The BJP and other political parties are borrowing strategies employed by the Barack Obama in the presidential elections of 2012 and this year studies shows that Mr. Narendra Modi is the most active and popular personality on twitter. He is the main ingredient and masala of all news channels, Facebook and many other sites. The present research paper studies the importance of use and rise of social media in the arena of Indian politics and its impact on general elections.

Leveraging social media is top-of-the-agenda for many political strategists.

INTRODUCTION

Gone are the days when social media platforms were only being used for making social circles and forming connections. Social media mirrors the real world and is all about conversation between millions of people. By engaging users to participate in, comment on and create content as means of communication with social graphs, other users and public. Social media has emerged as major tools amongst the youngsters where they are able to talk about day to day life issues, national importance and etc. According to Kalpan and Haenlein(2010) social media is a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated account.

It is well said that politics would progress to diversity and multifaceted communication channels and content (Robert Dahl, 1982). From this perspective, it is opined that use of Facebook could widen the scope of democracy and bring in pluralism (Anderson, Medaglia, 2009).

Social media also plays a pivotal role in recently 16th Lok Sabha elections which took a new phase where all the political parties with the help of all these social networking sites oragnised their campaigning. This is the first social media election in the country. Taking a leaf from US president Barack Obamas presidential campaigns through facebook and twitter influenced Indias political parties putting their advertisement on social media to reach out to their voters. It is being called Twitter elections because it is the largest democratic election in the world to date and so much of it took place online. In todays era all the elections campaigning have been organized with the help social media through posts on Facebook, uploading pictures on Instagram, tweets on Twitter and etc.

Out of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies 160 falls in the area where social is frequently used by the people. It is learnt that presently there are 814.5 million voters in India whereas; in the last Lok Sabha elections of 2009 there were 713 million electors. This shows that 101.5 million new voters were added since the last Lok Sabha elections and majority of them are first timers and youth. This indicates the level of involvement of younsters when it comes to 2014 elections.

India with its impressive growth with the IT exports naturally depended on the power of social media in challenging the conventional political communication channels with the aim of political empowerment and inclusion of young voters. To escape the gatekeeping by the media, politicians and political parties took shelter under social media. The new media has broken media stereotype and has become a medium for public discourse and has emerged as new power centre knocking down the mainstream media which wielded power for more than a century.

Classifications of Social Media Websites

Social media websites can be classified into various sites such as social networking sites, social news sites, social bookmarking sites, social photos and video sharing. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram where interact by adding friends, followers, commenting on their profiles or by posting posts, joining groups and having discussions. Social News websites are as Digg, Propeller, Reddit interact by voting for articles and commenting on them. Social Bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpyinteract by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people. Video sharing such as Youtube, Flickr etc., interact through sharing videos, photos and also commenting on them.

The most popular website is Facebook in the world which has a largest online community with over a billion active users including 60 plus million in India. Twitter has over 500 million active users and is invaluable as a tool to share instant updates.

Social Media as a Campaign Platform

The main advantage of these social networks, for an election campaign lies in its multiplier effect. A group of supporters who have connected with the campaign are exposed to content generated by the campaign. The content is expected to be engaging enough that supporters are convinced to share it with their friends. Hence to take advantage of this multiplier effect it is imperative that the candidates page or account is liked or followed by a critical mass of supporters. Candidates and parties have an explicit right to right to provide the information regarding their attributes, agendas, and proposed plans. Besides meeting directly with the public, parties accomplish this task through campaigns via social networking sites.

An easy way is introduced by the page of the candidates of the political parties on these sites, where they share their posts, tweeting about their agendas, posting photos, various advertisements, videos etc. Millions of likes and comments and hits on photos and videos show that how many political leaders are accessible and connected to public at large.

Social Media as an Open Forum for Debate and Discussion/ Public Voice

As enshrined in the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, all people have the right to express and opposing ideas and opinions. This social media has become one of the most vibrant platforms for people to voice views, share information, interact with leaders, and debate key elections issues. It offers the advantages of being democratic, allowing anyone to post their opinions on blogs, share links, forward or send emails, create websites and so on.

The use of new media in the Arab Spring uprisings is an example of the contribution of these new tools to political change. As some analysts writing in mid-2011 put it:Seeing what has unfolded so far in the Middle East and North Africa, we can say more than simply that the Internet has changed the way in which political actors communicate with one another. Since the beginning of 2011, social protests in the Arab world have cascaded from country to country, largely because digital media have allowed communities to unite around shared grievances and nurture transportable strategies for mobilizing against dictators. In each country, people have used digital media to build a political response to a local experience of unjust rule. They were not inspired by Facebook; they were inspired by the real tragediesdocumentedon Facebook. Social media have become the scaffolding upon which civil society can build, and new information technologies give activists things that they did not have before: information networks not easily controlled by the state and coordination tools that are already embedded in trusted networks of family and friends.

Social Media and C GovernanceSocial media has led to the emergence citizen led governance (C- governance) in India. Anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazare and protests followed by Nirbhaya gang rape were channelized through social media. These events in the last recent years garnered enormous national and global support by involving the common man.

Delhi Gang RapeIn December, Delhi gang rape case which made peoples collective anger to blast and come out on streets. Nationwide protest at India Gate area in New Delhi was people movement and it was the scruples of the people who made them come out and demand justice for Nirbhaya. Social media plays a pivotal role in mobilizing people to India Gate. Every news item was reaching them on their cellphones via Facebook and Twitter etc. People received the reactions of famous people who are respected and hold a special place in society and on twitter and got bonded like never before. The massive protests led the government to set up Justice Verma committee to bring changes in Rape law.

Later on the Criminal Law [Amendment] Bill, 2013 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 19th March, 2013, and by the Rajya Sabha on 21st March, 2013. The amendments brought stricter punishments for the rapists.

Anti-corruption movementAnna Hazare initiated a Satyagraha (Fasting for a nobel cause) movement for passing a stronger anti-corruption Lokpal bill in the Indian Parliament. He started hunger strike when the demand was rejected by Indian government. The movement attracted attention in the media, millions of supporters inside and outside of India. People showed support through social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Online Signature Campaigns like avaaz got more than 10 lakh signatures in just 36 hours. This led Government to seriously consider the introduction of Lokpal bill in parliament.

Election System in IndiaIndia, a largest democracy in the world, is secular and socialist country. Here, election of representatives of people involves management of the mega event in the world. During 2014 general elections, there were around 0.9 million polling stations across the country. The electoral roll is a list of all people in the constituency who are registered to vote. Only those people with their names on the voting list are allowed to vote. There are total 543 Parliamentary constituencies in India and this mega event of elections was held in 9 phases. The first phase was held on 07th April 2014 and the last one was on 12th May 2014.

The number of parties registered with the Election Commission of India is 1,616. This number consists of 6 national parties, 47 state parties and others as registered unrecognized parties. The elections of 2014 had a battle between few major national parties, namely the Indian National Congress (INC) or commonly known as Congress, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and some other national parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) etc. forming the third front.

The amount of money spent by the parties in these elections was around 30,500 crores which is second highest in the world after the US Presidential elections for year 2012 and it was around $7 billion.

Impact of Social Media on Indian Politics

Indias 16th National general elections which was held in nine phases during April and May, 2014 was probably one of the most awaited elections in the recent times with the changing Politics of India. According to observers, social media plays a vital role in deciding which party wins the most seats. A report published in April 2013 by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the Mumbai-based Iris Knowledge Foundation, Facebook users will have a tremendous impact over the results of the polls in 160 of Indias 543 constituencies and the reason for this is the youth of India.

As per indiaonlinepages site 2014 50% of population is below 25 age group and 65 % is below 35 % age group. This population is either studying in college or working in various companies such as IT companies, BPOs, research centres and various other sectors or are either entrepreneur. Their busy schedule has created a virtual distance between television and radio specially in case of acquiring or sharing information .The youth is tech savvy and love being connected with updated trends and topics which is possible by using laptops, desktops or the most favourite a network connected mobiles.

Even though politicians for their campaign still use posters, cut-outs, fliers, graffiti and personal rallys to reach and win over voters but with the social media changing the picture of urban India, political parties are becoming tech savvy and realizing that social media is the only way to reach out to the this young youth. Today, however, Facebook has 93 million users and Twitter has an estimated 33 million accounts in the country.

As per the LAMAI report 2013 this change for presence of social media could be observed as every political party participating in 2014 general election has set an 2-5% of its election budget for spending on social media. The report says that the leading parties Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Nation congress party has set this it 500 crores and 400 crores respectively.

From very beginning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has the biggest presence in social media. The BJP started using the social medium even before the 2009 general election .Mr. Narendra modi who was the Prime Minister candidate of BJP and all other members of BJP had very high popularity and a reach to general public using social media is as compared to any other parties. Narendra Modi have highest follower on twitter and Facebook .Aam AadmiParty or AAP which is a newly formed political party has quite high popularity as compared to the two old major parties Congress and BJP .AAP is very active on social media channels. It was observed that even though AAP and BJP were fighting against each other on social media but the Congress party realised its importance quite late.

Facebook in Indian Elections

The American companies- Facebook, Twitter, and Google seem to have made a conscious decision to keep track on Indian elections as they were sure of getting more hits or eyeball movement as well as revenue in terms of advertisements. When it comes to popular social media tools, Facebook is estimated to have 100 million users in India, which is largest outside the US. Twitteraites have doubled in India from January 2014.

In 2009, congress politician Shashi Tharoor showed that politicians can connect well to the computer literate masses by Tweeting. He had about 6,000 followers in 2009 and it has bulged to 2.16 million. And, now almost all prime politicians and political parties are into micro blogging. Among Indian politicians, it is Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP-led NDA in 2014, who has the highest followers on Twitter 3.89 million and stupendous 14 million fans on Facebook.

Katie Harbath, Manager for Policy at Facebook, had said that Facebook began working on the Indian elections during the end of 2013 and stepped up its efforts in March in 2014 when the elections were notified. Harbath had said that the entire India was discussing the LS elections and Facebook was really the key place of the conversation that was happening.

According to Adam Sharp, the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were turning into Indias first Twitter elections. It is not just the candidates, even the media and citizens were using the Twitter platform extensively to discover elections content, converse with others in real time and express their views. It is estimated that Facebook has 100 million users in India, next only to the United States. In 2013, India had the third highest Net users in the world. It stands next to the US and China in terms of users. As per the 2011 Census report, India has more mobile phones than toilets. It also means that nearly 1.2 billion populations are using cell phones. With the ever evolving smartphone technology and wide use of the same across India, social media tools have become easily available to the users at affordable rates. Hence, political parties and candidates tried their best to exploit the tools for vote gains.

Narendra Modi and Social Mediathe biggest turning point

The two most discussed and visible politicians on the Net are Narendra Modi, the PM of India and Nandan Nilekani the Co-founder of Infoysys, who had contested from Bangalore as Congress candidate. Narendra Modi was the de facto BJP candidate pan India. Hence the Netizen-cum-voters followed the campaign of him keenly which helps him to win elections. His digital presence was very high as compared to any other candidate in the poll fray. Modi has exclusive IT cells in his home state. The BJPs IT cell - National Digital Operations Centre (NDoC) in New Delhi is branded as IT war room. The party had identified 155 LS seats where it had extensive social media campaign besides the conventional campaign. This is based on the assumption that the BJPs prospects are better here. The details of voting pattern in each of the assembly constituencies in these select LS seats were monitored by the Delhi IT cell. Modi began depending more on the new tools to reach out people so that he can express his mind. He has been able to strike a chord with citizens through the extensive usage of the Net.

An engineer by profession, Channamallikarjuna said he worked in a team which created a Twitter account for Modi a couple of years ago. A bunch of professionals worked both at the IT cells of Ahmedabad in Gujarat and Delhi. It is said that more than one IT room functioned in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

The Modis office did not give out much information on its IT offices. But what is written in the media is that they nearly worked 18 to 20 hours a day. The dedicated technical team, mainly youngsters, kept track of issues related to Modi, his campaign and developments related to the elections. This helped in keeping touch with the Netizens and media besides keeping Modi updated on the developments. The feedback was helping Modi to quickly react to the development and his detractors. Modis website www.narendramodi.in consisted of his promotional material and the decisions taken by the Gujarat government. The presence of publicity material during the election campaign went up dramatically. It is said, according to a Daily News Analysis newspapers report, the site on an average received 27,000 responses for the postings on the web on any given day and during the campaign period it touched 2.5 lakh responses a day.

The website had Modis campaign letters, audio and video prints of campaigns, updates on his public rallies and daily engagements, news photographs and YouTube videos. There was provision for real time watching of his election rallies. Modi is hyper active on Twitter and Facebook. He was regularly posting his thoughts on his blog. Even on the last day of the polling on May 12, 2014 he had put a long thought cum thanking note. The content on this Twitter, Facebook, webstie and blog are same though the length varied.

Interestingly, for the first time a prime politician has acknowledged the power of social media. In his blog, Modi wrote on May 12, 2014 .We have to profusely thank social media it has caused the downfall of manufactured lies and half-truths at a very nascent stage. In this age of information and social media the lies that come out of their microphones cannot even get past the podium of their speech venues, forget reaching others. More power to social media in the days ahead. Modi did Google Hangout to connect to party workers and youth. He used Flickr, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Google Plus among others. He has been able to post a lot of publicity material using the social media tools.

Modi turned into a big canopy under which almost all candidates took shelter or did piggy riding on his back. The BJPs Prime Minister nominee also used social media to issue rebuttals to media house when his comments got coloured, twisted or backfired.Main motto of exercising Social Networking Sites

The main reason of exercising these social networking sites is to motivate the youth to vote in the coming elections. The peer recommendations play a vital role in influencing youngsters and this has ensured that a massive number of first time voters will participate in the 2014 elections. More than 800 million voters will be below the age of 25 according to a survey by the time the elections arrive. By breaking down politics and making it more engaging and inclusive, they want to make it easier to exercise our constitutional right. It was launched to get young and new voters on board through various social media activities.

Changes that takes place in 2014 elections Hashtags debut on a daily basis Google hangouts Online influence will start influencing the masses Social media is creeping into mainstream mdias political discussions The new rules of election commission to demand transparency in advertising the budgets to avoid malpractices.

Some Facts about Social Media and 3 Prime Political Parties:Facebook Fans of BJP 3.4 million Fans of Congress 2.5 million Fans of AAP 1.8 million

Twitter AAP 5.17 billion followers BJP - 417,000 Congress 163,000

The fifth E State

According to Business Today, the Congress party gathered for a Crash Course on social media. Among those who attended the one day workshop were lawmakers Ajay Maken, Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari and Deepender Hooda. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who has stayed away from social media, also stopped by for some time. The participants listened to executives from social networking giant Facebook, micro-blogging site Twitter, and mobile messaging service WhatsApp on how social media can be used to interact with voters.

"Social media is indispensable," says Tharoor. "If you are thinking about a long-term future, which we are, you have to build a platform today."

The Congress isnt the only party trying to ride the digital world, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also about a dozen tech professionals are crunching data on social media users. The data is broken down on the basis of gender, Facebook and Twitter users, and the mode of Internet access - mobile, computer, tablet, etc. Leading the IT team is Arvind Gupta, an IIT graduate who ran his own business in Silicon Valley before he began working for the BJP about six years ago. Gupta says social media could impact polls in 160 Lok Sabha seats where about 20 per cent voters have Internet access.

In a Business today survey, conducted in 12 cities by market research firm MDRA in October, nearly 95 per cent respondents said they were following the digital campaigns of political parties. The survey also showedthat over 46 per cent of the 1,010 respondents, who will be eligible to vote for the first time in 2014, take opinions expressed online seriously.

In April, research firm IRIS Knowledge Foundation said in a study social media could have a "high impact" on 160 of 543 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 polls. In these constituencies the number of Facebook users is more than the margin of victory of the winner in the 2009 polls or where Facebook users account for over 10 per cent of the voting population.

FACTS OF POLITICAL LEADERS FOLLOWERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Media Strategy to Win Elections 2014 of Political Party Mainly BJP, Congress And