What are the causes and consequences of the recent decision of the government of India to empanel social media influencer management agencies?
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HAS the Union government collaborated or does it intend to collaborate with social media influencers? If it has collaborated, what is the revenue spent on the collaboration?
These questions were put to the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (IB ministry) by Indian National Congress spokesperson and member of Lok Sabha, Manish Tewari, during the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament.
In a written reply, the Union minister of IB, Anuraj Singh Thakur stated that the MyGov platform has already empanelled four influencer marketing agencies with the objective of enabling wider dissemination of information related to various government schemes and enhancing citizens' engagement with such schemes.
The names of these agencies have not been disclosed. However, the response clarified that the government has spent no funds on these collaborations.
“According to the proposal, MyGov was established as an engagement platform of the government, which collaborates with other government bodies to engage with citizens for policy formulation.
The empanelments have taken place through the IB ministry pursuant to a tender notice issued on March 7 this year.
According to the proposal, MyGov was established as an engagement platform of the government, which collaborates with other government bodies to engage with citizens for policy formulation.
MyGov, with the purported intent to seek the opinions of people on issues or topics of public interest and welfare, is empanelling social media agencies.
Social media is a new and rapidly evolving genre. It does not have a well-settled canon yet and this elasticity offers immense opportunities to both defenders of democracy and freedom as well as proponents of authoritarianism and majoritarianism.
It is also a fast growing genre attracting more and more audiences away from mainstream media.
For instance, on Instagram, comedian Bhuvan Bam has around 14.5 million followers, followed by content creators such as Prajakta Kohli, Kusha Kapila, and Komal Pandey, each of whom have more than two million followers.
Ajey Nagar, who goes by the moniker Carry Minati, is a YouTube influencer with a whopping 39.8 million followers. YouTuber Ranveer Arora, also known as Ranveer Allahbadia or BeerBiceps, has 2.6 million followers on Instagram and 5.8 million subscribers on YouTube.
These social media influencers release their own content on the platforms and collaborate with multiple companies on various products, including clothing, food and beauty items.
They influence the choice of places people should visit, the food they should taste and the brands they should wear. That is how they earn money.
But what happens when their influence is redirected to political issues, in particular, electoral politics?
For example, some high-ranking Union cabinet ministers have made appearances as guests in multiple episodes of the podcast hosted by Allahbadia.
Some of his recent podcast guests are Minister of Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani; Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar; Minister of Textiles and Commerce, Piyush Goyal; and Minister of External Affairs, Dr S. Jaishankar.
There is ample evidence globally as well as nationally about the influence social media can have on democracy and democratic processes.
“Social media is a new and rapidly evolving genre. It does not have a well-settled canon yet and this elasticity offers immense opportunities to both defenders of democracy and freedom as well as proponents of authoritarianism and majoritarianism.
Again, this can be in the context of raising awareness on political issues as well for the purposes of electoral campaigning.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi started the 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' (I too am a watchman) campaign during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and changed his Twitter handle's name to 'Chowkidar Narendra Modi', thousands of followers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) followed suit and changed their Twitter handle names. For several days, #MainBhiChowkidar trended on Twitter.
Similarly, Manipur has been going through a 'civil war-like condition' for months, but it was only when a video of two women from the Kuki-Zo community being paraded naked by hundreds of men surfaced online, that hashtags such as #ManipurViolence, #ManipurHorror, and #ManipurIncident started trending on Twitter.
The video surfaced two months after the incident because of the blanket ban on the internet in the state, but it sharpened the question of the State's accountability.
Data collection
Social media is fundamentally a two-way communication mechanism. Vast quantities of data and meta-data of audience or users can be collected through social media.
This data can be used to create campaigns tailor-made for the audience of the kind Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics company, created.
In 2016, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica harvested millions of Facebook profiles and used them to influence 2016 US American presidential elections.
In India, the BJP is widely believed to be a savvy user of social media for such targeted campaigns.
Politics through other means
As social media is still an evolving genre, and is widely used to produce content on ostensibly non-political issues like comedy, food, travel and fashion, it has the potential to be used to push certain political narratives through what might seem like light-hearted chit chat.
In the podcast with Chandrasekhar, Allahbadia asks how the government is treating the "minority", consisting of people who are criticising it constantly.
“This pushing through of serious political beliefs through a style that mimics an informal conversational style is supplemented by politics as performance.
The minister gave the example of how his daughter and her friends did not understand the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. So, he invited her friends for a cup of coffee and explained the law.
Chandrasekhar went on to say that after the discussion most of them understood the law. However, a few of them, who according to him were invested in "left ideology" did not accept the explanation he offered.
This pushing through of serious political beliefs through a style that mimics an informal conversation is supplemented by politics as 'performance'.
Allahbadia's podcast is a typical example of this. By being 'reverential' towards their guests and 'thanking them for being cool' at the end of each episode, is the subtle message that the role of the interviewer is to be reverential being pushed across?
In traditional news media, the interview format is well established. The interviewer, as a representative of the fourth pillar of democracy, asks questions of the elected representatives so that citizens can know about the policies and programmes of the government.
The discourse is to ensure accountability. Questions of reverence or 'coolness' are irrelevant, in fact, they may serve as a distraction and hence seasoned interviewers never engage with them.
Economics
Social media is not bound by the traditional financial model of the old media, where ads, in particular government ads, were and continue to be the biggest source of revenue. Ads on social media are much more 'democratised' as they depend on the number of views a video or podcast has received.
While it is not clear whether the empanelment will accrue any direct financial benefits to the empanelled agencies or the social media influencers they manage, an argument can be made that the mere appearance of government big-wigs on these channels is bound to increase their viewership and, thereby, the money they earn.
In a full page ad in The Economic Times, the MietY endorsed a YouTuber and chartered accountant Rachana Phadke Ranade on issues related to stock market and investment. While Chandrasekhar clarified that the government does not "endorse" anyone, the argument about increased visibility and its footfalls stands.
An unsettled future
Despite the efforts to create a new selection of empanelled social media influencer agencies managing some of the most popular social media influencers, it is highly unlikely that India will witness the revival of the 'good' old days of State media.
“Social media is too fractured and decentralised for the government to channelise in a manner akin to how State television and radio used to be once upon a time.
Social media is too fractured and decentralised for the government to channelise in a manner akin to how State television and radio used to be once upon a time.
Social media space is also vastly more democratic, and despite the best efforts of the government to ban channels that critique it, people can simply refuse to follow channels promoted by or associated with the government, affecting both their finances as well as their impact.
As long as the viewership knows and understands that social media influencers managed by agencies empanelled by the government are a glorified version of the State media of yesteryear, and understand that their purpose is to present one side of the story, a return to the days of Doordarshan and All India Radio is unlikely.