“Youth induced Political Spring”
- An increasing number of youth are coming up with various tools such as GrassRoot, KnowYourVote.org, iForIndia.org, Operation Black Dot, Youth ki Awaaz, VoteRite et al aimed at driving the younger generation towards increased political awareness.
- 2014 will see the largest number of first-time voters, all of whom get their share of the news from social media.
- Parties are concentrating on building a brand on social media and leaders are directly engaging the youth via Facebook, Twitter, by answering queries and having chat sessions with them.
- Vast numbers of students are being hired by political parties to keep track of the country’s pulse and drive social campaigns. All parties responded enthusiastically to Youth ki Awaz campaign to crowd-source party manifestos.
- Goan congress replaced Fransicso Sardinha by 43-year old Reginaldo Laurenco following pressure from their youth segment.
- In the Delhi elections, 1,600-odd participants logged on to VoteRite and reached out to over 78,000 voters in 15 days. Greater impact is expected in general elections.
- Although Net penetration in India is only 13%, manifestation of the online effect is the 1:3 impact, that is, every user impacts 3 others, increasing the net effective impact. Trend not limited to English-speaking youth alone as seen by the fact that the most number of hits have been garnered by the hindi version of Dainik Jagran.
Exams Perspective:
- Demographic Dividend
- Social Media