Hashtag revolution in state assembly elections

THIRUVANTHPURAM: The 2016 state assembly elections being the first assembly election in which social media was widely used, it took some time for political parties to get their strategies right. The attention that the #PoMoneModi campaign garnered on Twitter forced a rethink resulting in a flurry of hashtag embedded tweets in the popular networking site related to the Kerala polls.

Tweets with PoMoneModi hashtag had put an otherwise confident BJP in a defensive mode towards the fag end of the campaign. The campaign had all the ingredients ­ pun, timing and right kind of support ­ to make it trending. Writer Anna Vetticad tweeted, “the genius of #PoMoneModi is that it's sarcastic and funny, not rude. Hail the #Malayalis :) :)“.

Barring BJP , which judiciously used hashtags since the beginning of campaign by sticking to #BJP4Keralam and #Vote4BJP , no other party focussed on them. After #PoMoneModi, all parties have been trying to trend various hashtags. The BJP launched #VaMoneModi in response and #VendaMoneChandy for a while, but it failed to click. The LDF supporters, meanwhile, tried to trend a similar #VandiViduChandy campaign. In order to portray its confidence ahead of the polls, the party also launched #LDF100plus.

Public Relations professional Tinu Cherian, said that #PoMoneModi united Left and Congress supporters against BJP. “It became a huge hit and made whole of India and International media talking about it. Soon similar hashtag campaigns followed,“ he said.“Such hashtags needs to be pushed to make it a trend. Once it starts trending, others will join in. Funny or pun topics gather more attention,“ he said.