By Mansi Kaushik & Rashmi Chauhan
Social media has emerged as a strong force in terms of shaping political ideas across the world. As India has the largest population with growing digitisation, it stands above all the nations in the race of transformation.
India has one of the cheapest internet prices across the globe, it has become so affordable that anyone can have a smartphone and access the internet hence, social media is a powerful platform for political parties to interact with their potential voters.
One of the best examples was the general election of 2019 where approximately one third of the voters were social media users. Although it is difficult to measure the accurate impact of social media on the electoral process, there is no doubt that social media do have certain effects on voters.
The impact of social media is not Limited to connectivity, it is beyond that. Especially during elections it becomes a means to spread misinformation and propaganda. Major political parties spread misleading information deliberately to put down the other parties and influence votes.
Now as, artificial intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly, it is leading to certain illegal practices such as deep fakes which is a form of manipulated media generated by AI, confusing the distinction between deception and truth.
Everything which is shown on social media is not true and fact checked which also is difficult to be regulated because of its vastness and high usage of social media by people.
The main objective is to study and investigate the impact of social media on India’s elections in depth. Specifically how social media influences voters, political communication and mobilisation. In addition, it also explores the regulatory process required to ensure ethical and honest use of social media platforms during elections. This research aims to provide substantial observations through the study of existing regulations, Acts, case studies, and current events.
There is an increasing influence of social media platforms on voter behaviour as well as electoral management and the role of the digital platforms is efficient and effective in shaping the form of the electoral process whether negative or positive.
The recent boom in social media plays an important and necessary part for promoting one’s party and publicising their leader makes it a significant research objective.
At a recent event as mentioned by former Chief Election Commissioner Dr SY Quraishi, Twitter helped them to take quick and effective actions against an incident that happened in 2012 in Uttar Pradesh. Some people tagged Dr Quraishi and asked him how he would rescue journalists surrounded by a violent crowd outside a counting centre. EC field officers were not able to provide details of the live incident but with the help of social media the situation was averted on time as the EC contacted the leader concerned and asked his followers to vacate the place.
Social media is a direct and quick channel of communication between the election mechanism body and electorate as it helps political parties to promote their party through various means. These digital platforms also include a public inquiry desk where the public can have direct access for their queries related to elections and concerned polls.
Recently, the Chief Election Commissioner while inaugurating the conference hosted by Election Commission of India under the aid of US in Summit for Democracy platform urged the digital platforms to use their algorithm power to flag fake news.
Social Media and The Election Process
India has over 600 million active internet users right now. Approximately 462 million people use social media actively on a daily basis in which WhatsApp has the highest users followed by Instagram. On an average, an individual spends 2.36 hours daily on social media. To conclude, social media has become a vital part of our lives and it does affect behaviour in various ways.
Social media allows candidates to engage with voters but also leads to challenges such as spreading of misinformation, as moving forward in the world of digitisation, we need vigilance and transparency. It influences electoral campaigns as it has changed the way voters and candidates of political parties engage with each other. For example, during the general elections of 2019, one third of the voters had social media access. While we cannot say it has a direct effect on elections, it does influence voters.
Durign elections especially, everything shown on social media platforms is not true and results in spreading misinformation. The trick is to usually sully the opposition parties to prove their party as a better option. This ends up influencing e oters as well.
Mostly such information is about how other political parties are involved in corruption and such other practices or they may be on the themes related to religion, celebrity, nationalism and development. Nowadays, such information is spread through Deep Fakes where there is only a thin blue line between deception and truth, which can easily fool innocents and influence them.
Social media may have provided lots of opportunities to communicate and influence voters but there are challenges. It can enhance patriotism as well as enhance democratic participation but it also ends up with aggressive behaviour and disagreement.
Political campaigns have been redefined due to social media. Such platforms have helped voters in making preferences, everything is updated on such platforms about political parties and everything is reaching the voters. Researchers believe social media campaigns have raised the voters’ interest in polls and elections. Now, every individual is updated about rallies by political parties, speeches made in those rallies, helping them choose candidates.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) initiated the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) project in 2009 to engage and educate the voters, such efforts with other political factors led to increase in youth votes percentage from 58 per cent to 60 per cent youth participation. This was one of the main reasons which led to BJP’s win in the 2014 election.
As India prepares for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the ECI has taken the initiative to engage citizens on social media platforms with their campaigns such as ‘turning 18’and ‘you are the one’. ECI has social media presence on Facebook, x, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp etc. ECI’s Campaign ‘turning 18’ is specifically for first time voters and to encourage youth to participate in upcoming elections.
While social media provides easy communication across the globe, it raises security and privacy concerns. There are several case studies which shows how social media platforms harvest personal data of users without consent. One such case is of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 which revealed how personal data of millions of Facebook users was harvested without consent and was used by political parties during elections including in India, this scandal raised privacy and security concerns during elections and manipulation of public opinion.
Another such case was the Twitter hack of 2020. It was a major cyber security incident where high profile Twitter accounts were hacked, these accounts included politicians, celebrities and businesses. The hackers had access to these accounts and they used it to promote the Bitcoin scam by asking the followers to buy cryptocurrency and send it to various addresses. This incident raised concerns about security of social media platforms and a potential threat that such high profile accounts could be hacked and used in influencing people during elections.
Social media platforms can use personal data to make profiles of individuals on the basis of likes and dislikes, their ideologies and trends. Such data is used for advertisement and targeting the specific class of voters. This has changed how elections take place, it obviously benefits political parties and big businesses but it risks 2 individuals’ privacy. Greater access to data means greater power to influence.
Spreading misinformation and fake news have become so common during elections because of the vast use of social media. Now various platforms are used to spread fake news and misinformation such as WhatsApp, it is one of the highest used platforms. individuals and groups circulate fake news and misinformation in the form of Messages, videos and images.
WhatsApp has high privacy protection so such fake news and misinformation cannot be traced as well. Such fake news can be spread to initiate communal tensions, violence, religion politics and other political propaganda. Other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are used in the same manner to spread misinformation and fake news with the help of fake quotes, photoshopped images and manipulated videos.
Misinformation campaigns often target regional language speakers and use cultural differences as a way to spread misleading information and setting false narratives. During elections, candidates try to spread false information about other candidate’s background, education and rumours about electoral fraud are common.
Deep fakes are also a major concern as their creation is far easier and more effective. The Election Commission announced steps to combat the spread of fake news and misinformation during elections on social media with the help of IT Act to remove all the fake news and misinformation. There is a project called ‘myth versus reality’ for doing this.
Government organisations are using social media for the purpose of spreading information,policy making, to educate the public on electoral processes etc. The Indian Government uses various digital platforms for seeking feedback from citizens, generating awareness on implication strategies in a way that people can communicate in their own language and due cognizance of the views expressed in local languages.
Social media interceders failed drastically to prevent their users from uploading or publishing flagged information which in return has resulted in withdrawal of their safe harbour. This failure might result in a negative implication on Freedom of Speech and Civil Liberties.
To cure such menace, the Indian Government has recently introduced a new amendment to the Information Technology Rules 2021. This provides unrestricted powers to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to create a “Fact Check Unit” to identify false or misleading information.
This new amendment also gives power to the Union Government to examine any false information and impose censorship through intermediaries. This amendment by the government has raised many questions on the Freedom Speech and Expression but through this amendment the government has tried to address the issue of misinformation which is hosted by the social media users which have serious consequences for individuals, communities and nation.
The Information and Technology Act is the principal law which establishes a legal aspect in governing all the areas of electronic communication including Social Media. This Act includes the Cyber Appellate Tribunal and Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee.
Section 66A was added through an amendment in 2008 under which it was made a criminal offence to send any information that is considered as grossly offensive through any electronic communication device. Section 66A was struck down in 2015 by the Supreme court stating that the amendment was violative of fundamental right under Article 19(1)(a) which is the freedom of speech and expression. The SC held that this provision was vague and too broad. Another amendment was introduced in 2018 which inserted Section 69A under the Information and Technology Act which gives power to the government to block public access to any information which the government deems fit and necessary for the interest of national security.
The IT Rules, 2021 replaced all the previous guidelines and sought to regulate intermediaries and digital news. There was a need to identify the first originator of any information. Section 79 of the IT Act gives immunity to interceders like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram as long as they work with due diligence and according to the guidelines provided by the state. New amendments passed in 2023 grant power to Government to sense bogus information and exercise wide range powers of censorship by making the interceders to take down such posts.
Challenges
Though the Government is trying to implement strict laws against the users or the first originator of the false information on digital communication platforms, there are many challenges faced by them. The new amendment introduced in the IT Act fails to define what fake news means and what it includes. The amendment also provides the power to the government’s fact check unit to declare the accuracy of any news that involves the state in respect of any business. The use of phrases like in respect of any business empowers the government to decide what people can see and write on these digital platforms.
Secondly, there are millions of followers and interactions on social media which are complicated so governing these complications asks for knowledge of algorithms, data privacy concerns. These algorithms are modified on a regular basis to boost engagement.
Thirdly, the state is only the one who determines the information as false and intermediaries are then compelled to remove such information. The new regulation empowers the government to exercise censorship.
Fourthly, the rights of the individuals to question authority and speak anything against the government or the state will diminish.
Due to the increase in number of users in social media platforms, the complexity of the algorithm also increases. Social media is a necessity in the modern world as it connects people together through various digital platforms. It gives access to people to host and publish any information, to communicate with each other and even express their thoughts.
It also connects Government agencies with people as the government can easily communicate to them and provide them information regarding their policy frameworks, ideologies and educate them about the electoral process. Any information regarding the election and the candidates can easily be accessible by people, they can easily connect with the agencies if there are any queries regarding elections through public queries pages.
Social media not only helps to communicate but also works as a faster news networking website as anything happening in any part of the nation whether urban or rural can easily be uploaded by any user. It works faster than many broadcasting channels which need huge setups to reach the incident places. The impact of this information plays a vital role in modifying any rules and law. If any need of changes is required in any process of election, election agencies can easily inform the public at large at minimum time period which helps in minimising any chaos.
The spread of misinformation and fake news is a significant problem in the age of the internet. Users easily modify any information and present it on the internet and it becomes difficult for the people to differentiate between the fake and the real news. This misinformation makes a huge impact on the state and government agencies.
To deal with such problems, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw spoke in the Rajya Sabha regarding the urgency to deal with the increase in use of deep fakes and misinformation. He talked about amending the Intermediary Rules for social media to tackle the menace of the wide use of misinformation in the digital platforms.
The government may urge the members to develop some sort of consequences on the need for more responsibility from social media portals. There should be a more strict and effective legal statute which can deal with misinformation and strict punishment should be initiated against the original creator of such information. Social media platforms should restrict contents which include any violence or hatred against any community and state as well. Users should be given knowledge to differentiate between false and real information.
—Mansi Kaushik and Rashmi Chauhan are B.A.LLB 5th year students of Amity Law School, Jaipur