BJP Mastered WhatsApp Elections In India: Shashi Tharoor

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mastered the art of influencing voters via social media platforms in Lok Sabha elections and WhatsApp has been their favourite medium simply because of its massive reach, Congress Party leader Shashi Tharoor has said. In a commentary piece on Sunday, Tharoor said WhatsApp is the favoured medium because 82 per cent of India’s mobile phone users have downloaded the app, and because it’s targeted to specific people.

“The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the master of this technique, running an estimated half-million WhatsApp groups across the country. Its IT cell head, Amit Malviya, declared in March that, ‘The upcoming elections will be fought on the mobile phone ...In a way, you could say they would be WhatsApp elections,’” wrote Tharoor. “The BJP benefits from vast armies of people, some paid and some volunteers, whose job is to feed the voracious appetites of these WhatsApp groups,” the Congress Party leader claimed.

A political party, Tharoor stressed, “can create groups defined by their interests, caste, or religious identity, or by a specific issue or cause, and bombard them with messages to reinforce their biases and convince them the party is with them”. Despite tall claims made by Facebook that it is removing 10 lakh fake accounts a day in India, a recent survey by online startup Social Media Matters and New Delhi-based Institute for Governance, Policies and Politics revealed that one in two Indians receives fake news via Facebook and WhatsApp. Facebook and WhatsApp are the leading platforms being used to disseminate misinformation. (IANS)

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