Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its ‘India Shining’ campaign in 2004 had demonstrated that it could very successfully exploit digital media including websites to reach the electorate across the country. During the Lok Sabha election in April/May 2009, the BJP armed itself with social networking media in addition to the tools of 2004. The websites of the BJP pariwar, such as the party’s national website www.bjp.org, http://lkadvani.in/ and http://www.bjpguj.org/, established its supremacy in the cyber age among the political parties. But in both the elections these new media did not help the BJP to defeat the ruling Congress-led alliance. This only proved yet again that the digital tools alone would not get a political party or a candidate a winning edge. The conventional campaign methods are still important at the poll battles in India.
This has been in keeping with the experiences of elections campaigns in USA, UK, Australia, South Korea, Finland, Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, and Hungary during the current decade. The campaign of Barack Obama during the USA presidential elections in 2008 was extensively discussed and studied in the world media. An important study was carried out by scholars in these countries. One key finding of the studies was that the parties and candidates examined in Finland, Netherlands, Slovania, the Czechs Republic and the United States tended to use websites to provide information to potential voters, journalists, and other political actors, but did not seek to engage or involve and mobilise citizens. At the same time, there are clear indications that use of the web did not simply reify existing political structures.
Many such studies have been carried out on the use of Internet for electioneering in the western and developed countries. There was very little study about the Indian elections. Therefore, there was a need to take an overview of the current status of the use of Internet in election campaign in this country. With that objective a team of the Ahmedabad-based Mudra Institute of Communications Research monitored the websites of Maharashtra and Gujarat units of the national parties and the candidates contesting the Lok Sabha election 2009. This essay documents the scenario in these two states.
Preliminary study: Our preliminary study revealed that there were seven websites of political parties for the two states (Annexure One, Table 1). These were state units of national parties of India. There were websites of only 24 candidates (Annexure One, Table 2). We say ‘only’ because there were 1171 candidates (Gujarat 359 in 26 constituencies and Maharashtra 812 in 48 constituencies) who contested the election as per the data of the Election Commission of India. We monitored the websites for two months to check if these websites had essential features to reach out to the voters in particular, and the people in general. The following is the gist of our findings:
Casual Alliances?: It is interesting to find that the political parties struggle hard to forge poll alliances on the ground; yet they would stay aloof on the cyber world. No political party said any thing at its website about the alliance; not even a simple inexpensive hyperlink to the site of the partner/partners. There was no explanation why the alliance was forged.
Consider, for example, BJP and its ally Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena had its home page that contained text indicating that it related to events of year 2006. The party updated the website, http://www.shivsena.org/, after April 01, 2009 when we had begun monitoring the websites. This site did not mention anywhere about its alliance with BJP. The Maharashtra BJP did not have any text or graphics except its party symbol on the homepage of its website www.bjpmaharashtra.org. It did not, therefore, have any mention of the alliance with Shiv Sena. Only one of the 24 candidates mentioned about the alliance of his party.
Forgotten websites: Many parties and candidates appeared to have forgotten that they had their own websites. Even after the election schedules were announced, these sites displayed contents put up long ago. There were no periodic updates of the contents.
State’s language ignored: A very important lacuna in most websites was that their contents were prepared only in English. The website hosts had not considered that most voters in their respective states understand only their mother tongue (Gujarati or Marathi in our study), compared to those who understand English. It would have been proper to provide the contents in Hindi as well because a sizeable number of voters in these two states would understand only this national language.
The hosts did not realise that it is not any more difficult and problematic to prepare contents in more than one languages. Ten years ago, it was not that easy.
Websites of some contestants were in two languages. But the contents were not similar in the two sections; these contents were more in English and less in regional languages.
Updates: A visitor would not know if the contents of the website are the latest unless the site webmaster mentions specifically the date of the last update generally at the bottom of the Home Page. No candidate or the party had such dates.
Interactivity: We sent mails to the hosts of the websites of the political parties on April 14, April 22, April 29 and May 05, asking some election-related questions (Annexure Two). The idea was to check if the hosts responded to queries mailed by general visitors. None of the seven parties responded to any of these four mails we sent.
Four of the 24 candidates responded to the mails sent on April 29 and 30. Three of them were independents, Dr Mallika Sarabhai, Meera Sanyal, and Arun Bhatia, while the remaining candidate Azam Pansare belonged to the Nationalist Congress Party.
Feedback: Most hosts did not seek feedback from the visitors to their sites. Those who did inserted feedback formats that normally put off the visitors because these are cumbersome to write. A simple email format (through Outlook Express or Gmail, or Yahoo etc.) was not generally used at these sites. No provision was made to enable the visitors to write in the regional language. Responses to the voters' mails in English were not translated in local language.
Only Dr Sarabhai was prompt to answer the emails sent by the people. Besides emails, her office received hardcopy of letters which were also responded to. They received average four to five emails every day and the team made sure that the emails were answered within 24 hours.
Only one website, that of Priya Dutt, had the facility to upload the feedback received from the visitors of the website. Two feedbacks that were sent as a test by the research team also got uploaded on her website. No other website uploaded feedbacks received from the visitors. Some politicians posted these comments received from the people on their blogs after filtration of text unfavourable to the host candidates. But these comments were not uploaded on their website.
Discussion Forum: No political party gave discussion forum or a similar feature to provide platform to the people to express their opinions on different issues. There were three candidates provided a feature called ‘Discussion Forum’.
Contact us: It is not possible for a voter/general visitor to contact the political party or the candidate if the contact details like e-mail Id, mobile or landline phone/fax are not available at the web site. Yet, seven of the 24 candidates did not provide even their postal address, 10 did not offer telephone numbers, 13 did not give fax number and eight did not mention their e-mail Ids. Only one chose to display the mobile number.
Declaration of assets: Only three of the 24 candidates displayed details of assets in their websites. The rest did not provide these details which they have to submit as affidavits along with the nomination papers to be filed with the Returning Officers. As it is, these are included in the website of the Election Commission of India
(http://eci.nic.in/CurrentElections/ge2009/Affidavits_fs.htm). Newspapers and NGOs used this information and made it public. A website of the candidate is obviously the right platform to explain how he/she acquired the assets and in the process to seek to demonstrate his/her transparency.
Site Map: This section gives an overview of all the contents of the website. This helps a visitor to locate information he/she needs without clicking all the sections. Only two candidates offered this facility, while none of the seven parties had such a section.
Webmaster: The webmaster’s contact details like e-mail and phone/fax, as also his/her company’s website URL, are very important when visitors encounter difficulties in reading the site. These details were not visible in nine of the 24 sites of the parties and three of the seven political parties.
Campaign Schedule: Only one party gave the campaign schedule during the period, while seven candidates provided details about how they planned to organise the campaign events.
List of candidates: Only one party displayed list of candidates. The rest six did not, even though they had only to provide a hyperlink to the web site of the election commission (www.eci.nic.in). All the parties did not have any links to websites of their own candidates or those of their alliance partners.
Constituency Profile: Only four candidates provided profiles of their respective constituencies. The rest 20 candidates and the parties did not to provide hyperlinks to the website of the Election Commission of India.
Achievements of the party: Most parties (four) displayed their histories and had links to their manifestoes (five), but only one spoke of its achievements. No party discussed important issues facing the nation or the constituency.
Site coordinators: From data collected during unstructured interviews with the web designers of the sites and political activists, it was clear that only the Gujarat BJP had a responsible person who could take care of the updates from the text and graphics received from its media unit and other sources. The remaining parties apparently left the content creation to a technical person of the website designer companies. They were not in a position to decide about the contents. One of them said it was a must that a senior party executive was available everyday to decide on the updates of the contents. This way the party or the candidates would be able to keep track of the voters’ mood, bouquets, and brickbats.
Social Networking Sites: Some politicians had given links of the social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook. On clicking these links, visitors could go directly to the home pages of these sites and can link to the online communities of the politicians. Dr Sarabhai used Twitter and Facebook effectively. Facebook has helped her more as she had 2200 members in the Facebook. She also used Twitter to update details about her activities during campaigning.
Some politicians used audio-video features effectively to engage the visitors of the site. It was used very attractively by the Gujarat BJP website. It had the audio-video features at prominent places of their homepages. These included clips of the speeches of the party leaders, campaign songs, clips, and videos.
Fund Raising: Barack Obama's campaign using new media in US presidential election in 2008 was talked about for, among other things, the fund raising for him. Another important feature was his success to attract volunteers to participate in his campaign. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, only Dr Sarabhai (Gandhinagar) and Mr Arun Bhatia (Pune) raised funds and attracted volunteers. The rest candidates or the political parties did not attempt.
Conclusion: Our study established that political parties and candidates in India have not been able to exploit the power of Internet. Very few candidates set up their websites. Those who hosted their websites did not provide important and useful features that would have helped them reach out to the voters. Most websites were not frequently updated. Most did not educate the people and voters in particular. Except a few, most did not include contents that could have led to engagement with the electorate and could have built up a band of volunteers for the ground level campaigning. Only two websites had features that could attract funds for the campaigns of the hosts. It could thus be surmised that election campaigns using new media were still in nascent stage in India. These can not be compared to US 2008. At best, these were closer to US 2002, if not earlier.
Annexure 1: Websites included in the study
(Abbreviations used in the following table: BJP – Bharatiya Janata Party, INC – Indian National Congress, SS – Shiv Sena, SP – Samajwadi Party, NCP – Nationalist Congress Party, PGP – People’s Guardian Party, IND – Independent Candidate)
Table 1. Websites of political parties in Maharashtra and Gujarat:
Sr No | State | Political Party | URL |
1 | Gujarat | BJP | http://www.bjpguj.org/ |
2 | Gujarat | INC | http://www.gujaratcongress.org/loksabhaelec2009.php |
3 | Maharashtra | SS | |
4 | Maharashtra | BJP | http://www.bjpmaharashtra.org/ |
5 | Maharashtra Mumbai | SP | http://www.spmumbai.org/ |
6 | Maharashtra Pradesh | NCP | |
7 | Maharashtra Pradesh | INC | http://www.maharashtrapcc.org/ |
Table 2. Websites of candidates:
Sr No | Candidate | Constituency | Political Party | URL |
Gujarat | ||||
1 | L K Advani | Gandhinagar | BJP | http://lkadvani.in |
2 | Mallika Sarabhai | Gandhinagar | IND | http://www.mallikasarabhai.in |
3 | C. R. Patil | Navsari | BJP | http://crpatil.com/ |
4 | Satyajit Gayakwad | Vadodara | INC | |
Maharashtra | ||||
5 | Gopinath Munde | Beed | BJP | http://www.gopinathmunde.com |
6 | Anil Shirole | Pune | BJP | |
7 | Ram Naik | Mumbai North | BJP | http://www.ramnaik.com/ |
8 | Kirit Somaiya | Mumbai North East | BJP | |
9 | D S Kulkarni | Pune | BSP | http://dskforpune.com/ |
10 | Milind Murli Deora | Mumbai South | INC | www.milinddeora.com/ |
11 | Priya Sunil Dutt | Mumbai North Central | INC | www.priyadutt.org/ |
12 | Gurudas Kamat | Mumbai North West | INC | http://www.gurudaskamat.org/ |
13 | Pratik Prakashbapu Patil | Sangli | INC | |
14 | Suresh Shamrao Kalmadi | Pune | INC | www.sureshkalmadi.org |
15 | Dr.Sanjeev Ganesh Naik | Thane | NCP | http://www.sanjeevgnaik.com/ |
16 | Vilas Lande | Shirur | NCP | www.vilaslande.com |
17 | Azam Pansare | Maval | NCP | www.azampansare.com |
18 | Samir Bhujbal | Nashik | NCP | http://www.samirbhujbal.com |
19 | Adhalrao Shivaji Dattatray | Shirur | SS | www.shivajirao.com |
20 | Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu | Ratnagiri – Sindhudurg | SS | http://www.sureshprabhu.in/ |
21 | Arun R.Kejriwal ( adv) | 26 Mumbai north | IND | http://arunkejriwal.com |
22 | Meera Sanyal | Mumbai south | IND | http://www.meerahsanyal.in |
23 | Pravin Madhukar Thakur (adv) | Raigad | IND | http://pravinmthakur.com/ |
24 | Arun Bhatia | Pune | PGP | http://www.arunbhatiaelect.com/ |
Table 3. Features of the websites of political parties and Candidates in Maharashtra and Gujarat
Political Parties as on April 2009 | Candidates as on April 2009 | ||||
S. N. | Contents | 8 to 10 | 24 to 26 | 24 to 26 | 30 |
Info about the website | |||||
1 | Language of Contents | ||||
1.1 | *English | 5 | 6 | 23 | 21 |
1.2 | *Hindi | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
1.3 | *Marathi | 1 | 0 | 4 | 5 |
1.4 | *Gujarati | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
2 | Fonts for Downloads | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2.1 | *English | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2.2 | *Hindi | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2.3 | *Marathi | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
2.4 | *Gujarati | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
3 | Site Analytics | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
4 | Indication of Last update | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
5 | Copyright | 4 | 5 | 18 | 16 |
6 | Webmaster | 4 | 3 | 15 | 15 |
7 | Visitors' Counter | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
8 | Site Map | 0 | 0 | 5 | 2 |
Informing the people | |||||
9 | History of the party | 5 | 4 | 7 | 8 |
10 | Manifesto | 5 | 5 | 12 | 13 |
11 | Campaign Schedule | 0 | 1 | 5 | 7 |
12 | Link to site of National Party | 2 | 1 | 7 | 7 |
13 | Achievements | 2 | 1 | 13 | 15 |
14 | Constituency Profile | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
15 | Informing People about other important issues | 1 | 0 | 7 | 6 |
16 | Alliance Partners | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
17 | About the Candidate | Not Applicable | Not Applicable | 22 | 21 |
18 | List of Candidates | 4 | 5 | Not Applicable | Not Applicable |
19 | Organisational Structure | 4 | 5 | Not Applicable | Not Applicable |
20 | Office Bearers | 6 | 5 | Not Applicable | Not Applicable |
21 | Info About Last elections (Loksabha or Assembly) | 2 | 1 | Not Applicable | Not Applicable |
Engagement of people | |||||
22 | Feedback , Comments, Suggestions, Complaints | 4 | 4 | 12 | 10 |
23 | Discussion forum | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
24 | Audio/video features | 4 | 4 | 15 | 13 |
25 | Face book | 2 | 2 | 6 | 5 |
26 | Orkut | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
27 | Twitter | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
28 | Blog | 2 | 2 | 10 | 9 |
29 | RSS Feed | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
30 | Opinion Poll | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Appeal to the People | |||||
31 | Appeal to vote | 1 | 1 | 9 | 9 |
32 | Appeal to Donate Funds | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
33 | Invitation to Join | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
34 | Volunteer | 6 | 7 | ||
Services to the People | |||||
35 | What is New ? | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
36 | Search facility | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 |
37 | FAQ | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
38 | Voter List | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
39 | Contact Details | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
39.1 | *Address | 6 | 6 | 17 | 17 |
39.2 | *Phone Number | 6 | 6 | 14 | 14 |
39.3 | *Fax Number | 5 | 5 | 12 | 11 |
39.4 | *Mobile | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
39.5 | *Email | 3 | 3 | 16 | 16 |
40 | Where to Vote | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
Media Coverage and Releases | |||||
41 | Media coverage (Print) | 1 | 2 | 15 | 14 |
42 | Media coverage (Electronic) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
43 | Press Releases | 2 | 5 | 9 | 8 |
44 | Photo Gallery | 3 | 3 | 20 | 19 |
Transparency | |||||
45 | Declaration of Assets | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
46 | Letters from Users | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
Note: The data in the last column has been considered in the essay above, because these were figures after the updates
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Annexure 2.
Interactivity and feedback from political parties and candidates
We sent messages to the political parties and candidates to find out if they have a routine system to respond to the e-mails sent by visitors to the websites. The first message (i) below is the complete text including the salutation and the signing off. The remaining ones are without the salutation and the signing off to save space here.
Please note that every mail was appended with the post-script as:
PS: Kindly note that your response to this mail will also be part of the data we are collecting regarding interactivity and promptness of the host of the website of political parties.
(This PS has not been included in the following reproduction of the messages)
i. Mail sent to Political Parties on 14 April 2009
Subject: Request for URLs of Candidates’ Web sites
Dear Sir/Madam,
We at the Mudra Institute of Communications Research, Ahmedabad, have undertaken a study of the use of Internet by political parties and candidates in election campaigns in Maharashtra and Gujarat during the Loksabha poll of 2009. I write to request you to help us by providing us URLs of candidates of your party in your state to enable us record contents of their web sites.
Kindly provide us the URLs of candidates of your alliance partners also.
Thanking you and with regards,
Yours truly,
Rahul Gadekar
Mudra Institute of Communications Research
Ahmedabad
Phone 079 32416988, 32442640 fax: 079 40024492,
Phone 079 32416988, 32442640 fax: 079 40024492,
Mobile: 09377688111
website: www.micore.res.in
PS: Kindly note that your response to this mail will also be part of the data we are collecting regarding interactivity and promptness of the host of the website of political parties.
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ii. Mail sent to Political Parties on 22 April 2009
I am Rahul Gadekar. Right now I am staying in Ahmedabad. Some of my family members are residing in Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai. Right now all are in Ahmedabad. All of us want to participate in polling of these general elections 2009. But we do not know where to cast our votes. Will you please kindly tell me where should we cast our votes? Can we cast it in Ahmedabad?
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iii. Email sent to Political Parties on 29 April 2009
This is further to my earlier e-mails sent to you about our study on Use of Internet for election campaign. As I have said earlier, I am part of a team at Mudra Institute of Communications Research, Ahmedabad, which has taken up the study for academic purpose.
Kindly let me know if you will be available to respond to the mails sent by voters to seek help from your party office-bearers during the polling tomorrow, April 30, 2009.
Please confirm if you have received this mail at the earliest.
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iv. Email Sent to Candidates on 29 April 2009
Let me introduce myself to you. I am Rahul Gadekar, a member of the team at Mudra Institute of Communications Research, Ahmedabad, which has taken up the study on the use of Internet during election campaigns.
We wish to seek information and experience about your website. Let me please know what time will be convenient to you during the next three/four days. Accordingly, I will contact you for an interview over the phone/or through chat or e-mail.
Please confirm if you have received this mail at the earliest.
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v. Questions mailed to Ms Vinutha Mallya, web coordinator of Dr Mallika Sarabhai, the Independent candidate from Gandhinagar, who had used our 'feedback' in her website:
Dear Madam,
We at MICORE, have undertaken study of the use of Internet by political parties and candidates during the Loksabha elections 2009. We have noticed that you have set up a web site for the campaigning. We will be happy if you kindly share your experience on Internet use.
We request you to respond to the questions which are as follows:
Q 1. How many visitors visited your web site during the election period in April 2009? Please give us a rough estimate.
Q 2. How many emails or feedbacks did you receive from the visitors of your web site during the election campaign?
What was the nature of the content of these feedbacks?
Was it generally about some grievances, complaints, suggestions, difficulties the voters are facing, or sharing views on various social issues etc?
Can we get approximate number of emails that broadly fall into above categories?
Q 3. How was your experience about the utility of the interactive functions on your web site, such as:
facebook
twitter
orkut
blog
flickr
youtube
linkedIn
Others etc.
Which was used most?
Q 5. How was the response to your appeal to people to register online as volunteer? (Please answer this in details)
How many of these volunteers actually worked for you during the campaigning?
Do you think this feature of your website was useful for the campaigning?
Q 6. What are the problems in online fund raising in India?
Can you please explain in details?
Q 7. Why did you provide Gujarati content on your web site?
Q 8. Please give us information about the Google Analytics of your web site. (Please answer this in detail)
Q 9. Can we get a rough cost of putting up and maintaining your web site?
Q 10. Did your web site have utility in educating the voters about elections and current issues?
Q 11. Do you think that Internet can be used more effectively and it will be more cost-effective compared to such conventional media during the next elections?
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Do please give us as elaborate replies as much as possible. We will be delighted if you share your experience with us not covered in the questions above.
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