Rahul Gandhi on ‘Social media’: On the 70th day of Bharat Jodo yatra, Rahul Gandhi addressed a meeting with the civil society members in Maharashtra. He made remarks on the impact of social media on elections saying that systematic bias is applied here, “if big social media companies apply they could easily make any party win elections”. He said that his social media accounts are a live example for the same. Gandhi claimed that his twitter account had limited followers because of pressure from the union government.
“I had written a letter to the former CEO Parag Agrawal mentioning that something strange has been happening with my account. I had a following of 2 Crores and was adding 8000-10000 followers on an average everyday. But then in August 2021, the number dropped to zero. My account had been locked and was restored a week later, this happened after I had tweeted about matters like human rights violations, farmer’s protests and a Dalit girl’s rape case.” Reported the Indian express
He also said that “social media is used as a strategic weapon by a specific ideology and its leaders to plant communal disharmony in the society”; without naming the party.
Then continued to take a jibe at the Government of Maharashtra saying even the government at the Centre has no idea which side they are on referring to the dispute between Shinde group and Thackeray’s Sena.
Thackeray’s Shiv Sena has shown support to Rahul Gandhi in his Bhrata Jodo yatra and as a sign of unity Thackeray’s son Aaditya had participated in the yatra alongside Rahul Gandhi in Nanded.
Impact of social media on politics
The widespread use of social media throughout the world has made it impossible to deny its impact on the social and political discourse.
Political parties have found themselves bound to embark on using social media and create their online presence as effective as offline.Â
The youth of this generation are excessively involved in political matters and constitute a great number of voters. Thus, political parties started using social media to mobilize the public and spread their ideologies and agenda among the masses.
On one hand, while the social media gives an opportunity to express freely and it is advantageous specially for the marginalized sections of the society to raise and voice their issues; it also proves disadvantageous on the other hand since it is also used to trigger controversies, spreading misinformation and planting hatred among the people.
