The Role Played By Social Media In Making Politicians Go Viral

Social
Media has rapidly grown in importance especially in the life’s of the
politicians and has become an essential part of every candidate’s
plan to get into office.
Social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube provide
new ways to stimulate traffic for citizen engagement in political
life as it’s important for candidates to get connected with the
public.

CPI(M),
the State Secretary Biman Bose said, “campaigning through the
social media platform is an effective way to interact with common
people as the party can answer their queries and even accept
substantial criticism in a positive and timely manner.” 
The
party’s National Spokesperson Derek O’Brien has more than 200,000
followers on Twitter and Trinamool Supremo Mamata Banerjee has more
than 650,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. On the other side the party
regularly-updates its website and accounts on Twitter and Facebook to
pursue the voters.

Derek
told PTI, “As a regional party, we are far ahead of all others
in West Bengal in terms of digital outreach. We focus on 360 degree
communication and stay in touch with people by using all available
platforms for communication – from street meetings to posters, stage
events to electronic and print media. And now it has stretched to
social media platforms too. He also said that the party will roll out
special election material on the social media platforms next week.”The
presence of social media is spreading as we all are seeing that the
politicians in India are relying more on social media and online
political engagement is largely restricted to people already active
in politics and on the Internet. The social media work as an
accelerator in conveying messages to the public which made it gained
the power to influence the public.