Influencers And The 2024 Indian Elections: A Digital Crisis
How social media influencers reshaped political campaigns and raised ethical questions.
This is for the first time that general elections of 2024 are influential in India’s history of politics. Manifestos, advertisements on media, and rallies were not good enough for campaigning. They opened the digital battlefield through the creation of Instagram reels, YouTube clips, among others. With their broad outreach to their audience, the parties got involved in delivering their campaign messages, constructing the opinions of the public, and propagating the projects initiated.
From the inauguration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya to policies like the Uttar Pradesh Digital Media Policy 2024, influencers seemed to become indispensable to political messaging in his election. However, this raised significant ethical concerns regarding transparency, neutrality, and creative freedom.
How Influencers Became the Weapon of Choice
The six-week-long April-to-June-2024 election was fought at the polls and on bright phone screens. Influencers, who have long held sway over sectors like fashion, lifestyle, and fitness, were now being drawn into the ranks of electoral politics to push political narratives.
Take the case of Ashish Mishra, a content creator from Ayodhya. With over 200,000 followers, Mishra’s reel about the newly inaugurated Ram Mandir was as much content as it was a political statement. He became part of the carefully laid strategy to spread the BJPs’ messaging when he framed the temple’s inauguration as a cultural and national landmark.
Political parties, particularly the BJP, seized the emotional appeal of these cultural events. They were expected to build public opinion and turn political campaigns into relatable, shareable content for millions of voters across the Indian digital landscape.
Digital Campaigns: A New Playbook for Politics
The large, diverse electorate of India combined with rapid digital adoption provided social media as an essential playing field for politics. It is estimated that in 2024, India will have above 700 million smartphone users and nearly 500 million active social media users for whom Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter become indispensable communication channels.
Political parties mobilized resources to target these users, recognizing that reels and short-form videos could carry as much weight as traditional campaign speeches. Social media campaigns allowed parties to:
- Micro-target Voters: Data analytics helped to target particular demographics by crafting messages appropriate to regional or linguistic peculiarities.
- Amplify Grassroots Initiatives: Through influencers, help government schemes and developmental projects and portray the former as transformative events.
- Counter Opposition Narratives: Real-time responses to controversies or criticisms ensure the opponents do not carry the narrative away.
The Role of Policies and the Ram Mandir Event
This made Uttar Pradesh Digital Media Policy 2024 a starting point for institutionalizing influencer political ties. The policy wanted to make the process less complicated and increase regional content generation; however, it was criticized for infringing on the freedom of creativity. Making the influencers speak about the initiatives from the government side would fail to differentiate between the natural feeling of content and the activities sponsored.
Among the major events being long-awaited, one can define a moment for an election’s digital strategy – the inauguration of Ram Mandir. Pictures, commentaries, and other narratives on social media took a long, free reign run, as if tied to the big message coming from the BJP. It, once a symbol of proud culture, is now for rallying the voters.
The Ethics of Influence
The explosive growth of influencer-driven marketing also raised moral questions:
- Transparency: Followers were unaware of paid cooperation since most influencers promoted political material without stating that it was a form of paid collaboration. Therefore, the authenticity of the message was brought into question.
- Neutrality: Influencers with vested interests in particular political parties might lose out on followers; therefore, neutralism is compromised.
- Creative Freedom: Critics said policies such as the UP Digital Media Policy 2024 stifled other viewpoints and only encouraged happy-ending stories.
These problems need more precise rules to guarantee moral influencer cooperation in the political arena.
The Global Context
India’s influencer-driven election strategy found echoes beyond its borders. Given that over a billion people are eligible to vote, the democratic exercise attracted people’s attention worldwide, and thus, it was one of the most digitally driven democratic exercises worldwide. Political strategists from the world were watching the power of the influencer among people.
This is now the trend of the digital political campaign in that social media outplays the old traditional media. The election 2024 shows technology being applied to democratize political communication and throws some question about regulation and ethics.
The Power of Authenticity in Political Messaging
Political campaigns became dominated by influencers for the simple reason that the public perceives them to be authentic. Influencer content is personal and far more relatable than traditional ads or even press releases. It lets political parties humanize messages and develop narratives that really resonate with human emotions.
For instance, in rural regions, influencers spoke of developmental works like road construction, electrification, and education schemes. All these stories, told in local languages and dialects, went straight into people’s hearts, resulting in increased voting.
Challenges and Criticisms
While the use of influencers in political campaigns offered several advantages, it also faced criticism:
- Misinformation: The swift speed of social media campaigns has made it easy to spread information without verification or truth.
- Polarization: The targeted nature of digital campaigns risked deepening existing social and political divides.
- Over-commercialization: Critics contend that transforming political tales into “content” lessens the gravity of the problem.
What Lies Ahead
Influence will only go up as the politics situation in India changes. More stringent regulation will be required to enforce accountability and transparency. There needs to be a balance that digital technology brings with the regulators and policymakers to the same democratic values.
The 2024 general election demonstrated social media’s capability to transform political discussion. Reels and votes helped political parties find a new front to influence and even redraft the code of campaign conduct.
The challenge in the years ahead will be to deploy this power responsibly so that digital innovation strengthens, rather than undermines, the democratic process.
