New Delhi: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) which has been perceived as being averse to online and social media presence, has amplified using social media including Twitter and Facebook for election campaigns.
A senior party leader told ETV Bharat on Thursday that the initiative was taken to connect with the people, especially the youth. “Yes, we have started using different social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Nowadays, everybody remains busy with their phone. So, social media is the best option to connect with the masses,” said senior CPI (M) leader and party’s former general secretary Prakash Karat.
According to Karat, these two social media platforms are the best option to connect with the youths. “They (youths) remain engaged with Facebook and Twitter. So we have asked our State units to make maximum use of social media. According to the election commission, the number of voters in the age group of 18-19 years has risen from 6.7 lakh in Jan 2023 to 11.2 lakh now.
“We have especially asked our West Bengal and Kerala units to make maximum use of social media,” said Karat. The CPI (M) is contesting in at least 50 Lok Sabha seats in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election across India, and this is for the first time that the party is contesting in such minimum numbers.
In the 2019 election, CPI (M) contested in around 60 seats. Interestingly, the Bengal unit of the party has recently unveiled an Artificial Intelligence (AI) anchor, Samata, ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Through a video on the social media platform X, the Bengal unit of CPI(M) introduced the AI anchor.
The CPI (M) is using the web platforms to reach out to the masses with campaign events, candidate profiles. Through social media, the party has also been targeting the BJP government at both Centre and state. As per government data, India has over 1.2 billion mobile phone users and 600 million smartphone users.
According to a report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), around 84 percent of smartphone users in India check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up. The report also revealed that around 31 percent of waking time is spent on smartphones and people check their devices 80 times a day on average.
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