Truth vs Hype: Can social media win elections?

Five days after Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi slugged it out online, the representatives of some of India's best known PR and social media marketing agencies - like Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm, Dileep Cherian of Perfect Relations and S Swaminathan of Iris Biz Services, found themselves making pitches to political strategists of the Congress and the BJP.

Calling in the professionals is a step up for political parties, for whom a social media strategy has largely meant a mix of volunteers and old timers updating websites and sending e-mailers from a dingy backroom.

So what's changed for politicians to take Facebook and Twitter seriously? The numbers: at the time of the 2009 election, there were only 1.6 million social media users. But today, the number has jumped to 65 million, roughly 5% of the population. And by the time of the projected next election, in late 2013, or early 14, that figure could be 80 million.

Politicians are also apparently impressed with social media's role in the recent street protests - like the ones after Mumbai's 26/11 strike, the Anna Hazare agitation and the protests sparked by the Delhi gang-rape.

          Groups like the Iris Business Services, have now sliced the data further to demonstrate it is relevance in an Indian election. Iris mapped Facebook users by Lok Sabha constituencies to find that in 160 constituencies, the number of Facebook users was higher than the margin of victory. For instance, in Thane, the margin of victory was 49000 votes. The number of Facebook users in Thane is 4,19,000.

Swaminathan points out that these are not limited to big cities, but cities as far afield as Jaipur, Indore, Madurai and Patiala, all have significant social media clusters, mainly due to the spread of smartphones. India only has about 13 million internet connections. But a majority - almost 60% - connect to social media via smartphones.

At the same time, the study is a highly simplistic exercise. There is no deeper study of how many Facebook users are voters, or whether they are politically engaged. Nor is their evidence to suggest that social media can influence election outcomes.

Swaminthan says, "It is no one's contention that FB users will vote as a block. But for example, the place where I live in Thane, the Thane Facebook user community is considerably more homogeneous than the Thane electorate. It's also likely given again the bulk of these voters are probably first-time voters. Most of them are below the age of 25. It can have an impact in terms of voter turnout as well. When you combine all these things together, the contention is not that they will vote as a community and that they will determine who will win or lose. It's just basically saving that they have the critical mass to influence the election." So social media might have reached critical mass in India - but how can it be leveraged to help political parties?

At his Mumbai office, Mahesh Murthy says the same social media strategies he used to promote his corporate clients could also work for political parties. For example, Pinstorm runs the Twitter account of Cadbury Dairy Milk , where they aim to generate what he calls 'remark worthy' tweets. He says he can provide the same service to political parties.  Pinstorm also runs Cadbury's Facebook page, which it peoples with interactive content.

          Members of the Congress and BJP said they were interested, but refused to commit as to whether they were signing these agencies.