Social media has become an integral part of any political party’s campaign strategy these days.
Apart from having individual social media accounts of their respective party leaders, every political party has a separate social media wing, not only to counter the opposition, but also to propagate its own philosophy.
The YSR Congress party headed by chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has been maintaining a strong social media network, which has played a major role in the party’s victory in the 2019 assembly elections.
Operated under the guidance of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) promoted by popular political strategist Prashant Kishor, which has been hired by the YSRC, this social media wing has somehow not been very effective after the party came to power.
Hitherto, the YSRC social media wing was being monitored by party general secretary and Rajya Sabha member V Vijay Sai Reddy. Now, with elections to the state assembly just a year-and-a-half away, Jagan has decided to make complete overhaul of this wing to make it more effective.
According to sources, on Monday, Jagan held a crucial meeting where he announced a total revamp of the social media wing, as per the suggestions of I-PAC coordinator Rishi Raj Singh and his team.
The meeting was attended by state government advisor Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy and other coordinators of the YSRC social media wing.
Jagan reportedly explained the strategies to be adopted by the party in social media networking right from state-level to the constituency-level.
Sources said Jagan decided to strip Sai Reddy of the responsibility of social media monitoring and entrust the same to S Bhargava Reddy, who happens to be son of Sajjala.
In turn, Bhargava Reddy will be assisted by two advisors -- C V Reddy and Arjun Reddy, who is said to be a close relative of Jagan.
Besides, Bhargava Reddy has four in-charges – Devender Reddy, Challa Madhusudhan Reddy, Shiv Shankar Reddy and another person. Under these supervision, there will be as many as 200 social media activists.
Their responsibility is not only to take the government programmes strongly into the people, apart from effectively countering the opposition criticism at all levels. They would be given extensive training in this regard, so that they would work in coordination with the I-PAC.
Jagan is learnt to have decided that a system would be established to prepare the required content on these two aspects and pass it on to the social media wing regularly, so that they would use the same in the social media publicity.
Political observers, however, say despite having such a strong social media establishment, there has been no proper monitoring of the system.
“Nearly 90 per cent of the people who are appointed in this social media wing have no connection with the social media platforms at all,” an observer who has been closely watching the party campaign said.
Secondly, when there is such a huge establishment of over 200 people, there is no proper monitoring mechanism.
“There is no way one could check who is posting what out of these 200 people. Those at the help have little time to monitor all these things,” he said.
Thirdly, there is already a digital media wing in the government which is taking care of the propagation of the government schemes and programmes. As such, it is only a duplication of work.
“In fact, many of the social media activists who are posting pro-Jagan and anti-TDP messages in the social media have nothing to do with the party wing. They are independent supporters of Jagan, staying abroad or elsewhere in the state. They are doing a better job than the party’s real social media wing,” the observer said.
It appears the I-PAC is messing up too many things in the party’s social media, instead of focussing on working out strategies to bring the party back to power for a second time.
