Role of Social Media in Election Campaigning in India with Special Reference to Assam

This is an attempt to find out the role of social media in election campaigning in India with special reference to Assam. Democratic countries like United States of America, India the social media has become an integral part for political communications during election campaigning. This new way of campaigning during election plays an important role to attract voters. Social media has given a new platform such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Whatsapp, Youtube etc. to the political parties and the voters, these are becoming an easy tool for the political leaders to interact with their voters. Social media allows candidates to share, post, comments, and their views during election and making them more direct involvement to their voters. These new tools or platforms are appeared as new area for research. Firstly to find out the term of social media, secondly, general meaning of political campaigning, thirdly, uses of social media in Indian election campaigning with reference to Assam and lastly conclusions.


2
Published by SCHOLINK INC. election Campaigning is an integral part of it and from time to time the Political Parties have been using different tools for their campaigning. Earlier the Traditional Media has been playing an important role in election and now the evolution of new technologies and the internet has changed the entire world and election is not exception to it. The new technology and the internet have changed the political atmosphere in India. Social media has had a transformative effect on our democracy. This is mainly because internet and the availability of cheap Smartphone in the market. Earlier there was no such tools of social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Orkut, Google+ etc. but now the Political Parties have been using such tools during Election. These tools have break down the gap between the politician and the voters, voters can easily interact with their leaders of various political parties. The leaders of the political parties have been using tools of social media to cope up with the new young voters. Assam is a state which is far from the metropolitan city like Delhi which is the Capital of India where it has seen that the social media has made an impact in the last Assembly election of Delhi in December, 2013.Although Narendra Modi had used social media during Gujrat Assembly elections earlier the atmosphere had remained unchanged. It was the Aam Aadmi Party during the 2013 Delhi Assembly Elections that demonstrated how social media could affect an electorate, and influence elections.

Method
Data has been collected purely from secondary sources like journals, books, research papers, news papers, websites etc.

Objectives
1) To understand the general meaning and the term of social media in Election.
2) To understand the general meaning of political campaign.
3) To understand the role of social media in Elections in India with special reference to Assam. 4) Conclusions.

Meaning of Social Media
Social media is broadly defined, "a variety of websites, services and applications that allow users to engage in social behaviors online or on a mobile phone". Social Media is also defined as, "the objective of online communications channels dedicated to community based input, interaction, content sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, micro blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social durations, and wikis are among the different types of social media". Social Media, defined as "a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content" (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010)  be thought of as a hybrid between email and the web forums of today, and many of the popular group sites of today, such as Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups. If we are taking about who invented the term social media the term become a buzz word in the past 5 years. So who invented the term social media is not 100% clear best information is as follows: • Darryl Berry who claims he used the term starting in late 1994 while working on Matisse, an online media environment and for a paper in may 1995 on "Social media spaces", which predicted the evolution of the web into a network engaged users.
• Ted Leonsis who in 1997 is cited using the term in the same manner in which it is used today and claims to have created this term.
• Tina Sharkey who owns the domain SocialMedia.com since 1999 and claims she coined the term during her days working on ivillage, where she was in charge of community building.

Social Media and its uses in India and Assam Assembly Elections 2016
The uses of social media in election campaigning is not an isolated event occurring in India, throughout the world the social media is being used by the political parties during election campaign to attract voter. The internet has changed the way of life and internet has become an integral part of our political, economic, and social lives now a day people purchase goods from Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc., to make maximum use of social media to reach out to the voters of Assam, as part of the plan, the party has readied an army of 300 odd volunteers to put across its message to the masses, using different platforms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Google+.
There was new trend seen in Assam during election time the political parties mainly the BJP and Congress indulged in some musical fight on social media through videos. It was rightly said by Ankhi

Das of Facebook Public Policy Director for South and Central Asia, "Facebook is the destination for
authentic conversation about politics. It's a place for citizens to learn about candidates, for friends to debate political issues, and for candidates to reach voters. Candidates are using facebook to reach citizens directly and personally. They are having unfiltered conversations about important public policy issues and getting honest feedback from voters". In social media there were few theory by the BJP as "Last Battle of Saraighat", "Paribarton", "Ab ki bar Mudi Sarkar" very popular among the voters. This theory's has been drafted in such a manner in social media that the people of Assam were discussing these theories everywhere in regular basis. As per the information, by the writer Prabin Kalita, "north eastern states lag behind in internet, mobile connectivity. Still there are areas where internet is not available in Assam. So the impact of social media in election campaigning Assam is not at par with the other states.

Result
After examining the entire elements one can safely asserts that the social media has changed the way of

Discussion
In the age of Globalization it is very important to all the political parties to cope up with present climate of the politics. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Google+ etc are the platforms where all the leaders and the voters are now putting their time in internet to get the information or the latest any events took place during election. The political parties and the voters immediately react with the events. They post, share, or comments, twitted immediately after seeing the www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjssr events in the social media. So the social media is a platform where they can interact easily to their voters and it's an easy way to reach voters. Social media has given a platform for politicians to post a presumptive agenda. Through social media politicians can mobilize public and invites them to participate in discussion on some issues. In the age of globalization it's very important to all to understand social media role in elections and at the same time election commissions should put their more effort on these sites which has been used by the politicians during elections. Therefore, new effort and more study are required to focus on this new trend of politics in Assam.