Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are not the only players in the web-space that are analysing trends and improvising. Modi government has also taken to trending on social media in a big way to know how the government is performing.
Prime minister Narendra Modi has set up a system of weekly analysis reports to know what is emerging on the social media about him and his government. The exercise being performed by the ministry of information and broadcasting under the new media cell (NMC) and before going to the PMO is also vetted by the union home ministry.
Sources said the exercise is being done to gauge the mood of the public on announcements, schemes that various ministries engage in and the impact of the utterances made by the ministers or leaders and on the basis of it understand what are the emerging strengths and pitfalls for the government and on that basis nuance the strategy of the government.
To perform this task a dedicated team of senior PIB officials have been roped in the New Media Cell (NMC) under I&B ministry that with the help of computer savvy team of youngsters continuously upload tweets and monitors the web, especially twitter, facebook, and youtube that are being used extensively by the Prime Minister Modi himself to reach out to the public.
Ironically, the decision to create NMC was taken by the UPA government in August 2013 but it could hardly derive any benefits from it.
To know the trending on social media, the I&B has also roped in a Hyderabad based IT solutions company that monitors twitter handles and fb accounts and sends the trends to the PMO every day and also through weekly and monthly reports, sources said.
The reports show the trending i.e. how a particular decision of the government or the utterance of a minister is doing in the social media, the official added.
In PMO there is a dedicated team under Hiren Joshi, who heads the IT unit, and further analyses the social media trending and provides feedback to the PM. Specially brought from Gujarat, Joshi was heading social media cell for twitter savvy Modi when he was Gujarat chief minister.
No doubt that the concerted effort to have presence on social media has given Modi a huge edge over his competitors (if they can be called competitors). In comparison to Narendra Modi 6.6 million followers, Rahul Gandhi is struggling even to touch a lakh, home minister Rajnath Singh has 2.6 lakh followers, finance minister Arun Jaitley is followed by 8.08 lakh and L K Advani has just a little over 5,000 followers.
Brand Modi is way ahead of even PMO India that has 2.6 million followers and the official government website of PIB that is followed by 2.64 lakh people.
On Facebook, it is again brand Modi with 22 million followers that has taken lead over PMO India which is followed by 5.6 million people. The ministries are still struggling to find space on social media sites to make their presence felt. Only 5 ministries have twitter handles with railways ministry topping the charts with 90.7 thousand followers while the ministry of youth affairs and sports has only 439 followers on twitter.
However, despite already having a formidable presence on the social media, the PMO is craving for more web space. It has roped in Google India for citizen engagement platform MyGov, for which Google is launching a nationwide contest to develop a mobile app for the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). "The mobile app will bring the PMO to every citizen and the contest will showcase how Indians can build a world class app," said a recently issued statement by Google India.
But would this huge presence on social media suffice for good governance and be able to woo people? The bureaucrats within the Modi government are sceptical.
"In India, these tools are still a medium only for the upwardly mobile people and urban youth. The fan following on social may be a good status booster but the government cannot run programmes and tailor it on the whims and fancies of twitteratti. India is not US where the quality of tweets play out in elections," said a very senior government official.
Space on social media: Brand Modi versus others
Twitter
Modi – 6.67M
PMO – 2.6M
Rahul Gandhi – 95K
Rajnath Singh – 206K
Arun Jaitley – 808K
L K Advani – 5K
Ministry of Railways – 90.7K
Health – 14.7K
HRD – 33.3K
Finance – 7.9K
Youth affairs & Sports – 439
Facebook
Modi – 22M
PMO – 5.7M
Rajnath Singh – 2.5M
Rahul Gandhi – 15K
Arun Jaitley – 1.4M
LK Advani – 87K
Railways – 207K
Finance – 459K
MEA – 458K
Defence – 5K
HRD – 20K
I&B – 306K
Home – 20K
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