This document analyzes the Facebook presence and engagement of political parties in Tamil Nadu, India. It finds that traditional party membership is declining while social media followings rise. Younger voters are less committed to parties than older generations. The document recommends that parties leverage social media more for offline campaign events in order to mobilize supporters, especially in marginal electoral districts. It also suggests parties may find it harder to raise money but that activities will be cheaper online, and crowd funding could help transparency. Ultimately, all parties need coordination and voter mobilization, which social media may help address.

1. Tamil Nadu Political Parties
Facebook Presence & Analytics
March 29 2016
Arranged in Ascending order of Ranking and includes Tandora’
suggestion to improve rankings
Green Tick Mark against Metric shows – Good Job
Red Cross against Metric Shows – Needs Improvement

2. FB Presence -Politics
• Traditional political party membership is dwindling while social media
followings are on the rise. It's time for political parties to get used to this
new type of membership -- elastic, less loyal and conditional.
• What is important is not the number of likes but the engagement of fans
on page since these are going to be your word of mouth campaigners on
the FB World.
• Younger people are not only less likely to be members of political parties,
they also display a comparatively weaker commitment to these parties
than older netizens
• Leverage Online – for Offline events, Checkins and measure ‘influencers’
contribution in a scientific manner.
• Social media and the internet is becoming the place for politics. The
Oxford Internet Survey -- an annual snapshot of our internet behavior --
shows a very definite shift toward online political activism. The percentage
of people who signed an online petition is expanding exponentially while
those doing this offline is falling.

3. Down by 18%

4. UNCHANGED

5. UP by 8%

6. Down 17%

7. Down by 3%

8. UNCHANGED

9. UP 1% wow

10. Down 1%

11. UP 4%

12. UP 1%

13. UP 1 %

14. UP 3%

15. Up 5% over last week

16. The Future
• Our political parties will have to get used to this new type of membership -- elastic,
less loyal and conditional -- which can nevertheless be mobilized at election time
within a short notice. Facebook pages groups and Twitter feeds can spread a
message and mobilize voters for next to no cost.
• When in cases where elections are often won or lost based on the mobilization of
voters in marginal seats, especially in the first past the post system. If I were a
party hack strategist, I'd be looking to use social media in these marginal's to bring
together supporters and create self-organising units of volunteers who can co-
ordinate their efforts. Of course it might not represent the same degree of loyalty
or reliability as the ‘offline worker’ and that might take some getting used to.
• Raising money will be harder, but activity is cheaper: and online donations using
crowd funding sites might fill some of the shortfall it can also bring the much
needed transparency for India’s rather opaque electoral funding scene.
• Other problems and challenges to the system lie just over the hill too: We are
seeing many recent political activism and movement that has been successful in
part because so much control has been ceded to local branches who cleverly
leveraged social media. That distributed decision-making persuades many to give
up their evenings and weekends to meet in small halls around various
constituencies. But indeed It's a brave party that does that in the Indian Political
Landscape.
• But ultimately, all political parties need co-ordinating machinery: they need to
organize supporters, raise money and mobilize voters. The party system is
struggling to fulfill that role. It might be time to think about alternatives such as
social media, atleast that’s what many recent electoral success stories indicate.

17. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION
dindiz@gmail.com
Srinivasan Venkataraghavan