15 million young voters who are in the 18-19 age group will exercise their franchise for the first time in the upcoming 2019 General Elections. They are soft targets for political propaganda as they are not as familiar with the socio-economic and political system of India as they are with PUBG or Instagram.
Unlike most ageing Indians who treat their political parties like their favourite football team, choosing who to vote for doesn’t come easy for young voters. They barely know the names of their politicians apart from some famous names dominating the news sphere all the time. Forget about the party’s ideology, some of them might even not know the difference between an MP and an MLA. Not to blame them anyway, since their ignorance about the system is born out of a flawed system itself.
Political parties are leaving no stone unturned to capitalise on this opportunity, especially on social media platforms. From ‘history lessons on WhatsApp’ to ‘sophisticated tweets pulling another party down on Twitter’ they have content for all strata of Indian society. Crores are spent on Facebook ads by parties counting their achievements and advertising their merchandise. With one click, you are profiled and countless assumptions are made about your likes/dislikes using artificial intelligence. Then, begins the sorcery of algorithms and meta-data.
Algorithms used by the social media giants dupes a user into believing that all the interesting pages and people encountered by him are just random on the internet. Companies are hiring psychologists who work along the engineers to keep the platform as engaging as possible. For instance, Twitter would encounter a sharp decline in traffic if it keeps on showing users tweets from people/ideologies they disagree with.
To keep their users happy, social media companies keep feeding their users with the content of their likes and previous browsing habits, thus creating an echo chamber, where dissenting voices or opposing views are suppressed.
The bombardment of jargon from all directions makes it difficult for the voters to get some real information about the political parties. Well, PRS India is one of the places on the internet to get substantial data on your area’s MPs and MLAs and reviews of bills and policies. It is an Indian non-profit organisation established to make the Indian legislative process better informed, more transparent and participatory.
This election, let’s make informed choices.