New medium, old habits: Use of twitter during 2017 state legislative election campaign in India

Politicians utilize media to urge the populace to vote and support them, particularly during elections. Communication has evolved significantly since the dawn of the Internet era, from social media to chat rooms and instant messaging. Social media has become a vital aspect of political communication during election campaigns during the previous two decades. During India's 2014 general election, all political parties and candidates made substantial use of social media to rally voters. Social media has emerged as a critical campaigning tool in India's electoral system. These new media platforms are expected to play a vital role in attracting voters, particularly the new generation of young adults.

As the 2014 Indian Lok Sabha election campaign shows, political players can successfully use social media platforms such as social network sites (SNSs) and microblogging services to broadcast information to voters and connect and discuss with them. Through hand-coded content analysis of tweets, this study aims to obtain insight into the extent of usage of Twitter by both parties (BJP & INC) in the political process and communication techniques during India's 2017 state legislative election campaigns in seven states, also examining how their strategies varied by the state to state. The statistics indicated that BJP candidates were likelier to utilize Twitter than INC candidates, tweeting twice as frequently on average. Additionally, the BJP was more likely to embrace Twitter's multimedia capabilities.