Election in times of pandemic forces parties to go ‘phygital’

Chennai: The still raging Covid-19 pandemic has ensured that this state election is like no other. But, political parties have adapted.

From memes and messages on WhatsApp to Facebook live sessions, to speeches reaching door-to-door with LED-mounted vans to hashtag trend wars on Twitter, they have taken the ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) route to reach out.

Makkal Needhi Maiam candidate from Velachery Santhosh Babu, forced into quarantine by Covid, is talking to his constituents via Zoom and WhatsApp video calls through laptops carried by his team physically door to door. “There is nothing like physically connecting with my voters but I am now forced to extensively use the second-best route,” says the bureaucrat turned politician.

The Dravidian majors are leveraging social media to take each other on in a no-holds barred battle.

The AIADMK has perhaps one of the largest IT wings a central war room and around 80,000 WhatsApp groups each with around 150 members.

From roping in the viral character of Mrs Janaki for Covid awareness to campaigns like ‘Manasellam EPS Makkalukkaka EPS’ and the more recent “Vetrinadai podum Tamizhagam,” the party is spewing non-stop content. K Swaminathan, secretary of the IT Wing, says, “We use micro-targeting strategy with relevant messages pushed across separate WhatsApp groups for students, professionals, housewives, pensioners, etc.”

The DMK, with Prashant Kishore’s consultancy firm IPAC in tow, has ‘Ellorum Nammudan,’ the ‘WeRejectADMK’ campaign and Covid relief initiative OndrinaivomVaa, but it is the ‘Stalin Ani’ app, facilitating a two-way interaction between president M K Stalin and the electorate, that it is counting on. “With over 8,00,000 downloads, the app has national reach like no other. When the leader’s physical events are streamed live, we get massive viewership on the app,” says a member of the digital team. “In just the last seven days, MKS has climbed the Google search volume charts with 150% more popularity than EPS among digital users.”

BJP has a war room for each constituency, churning out 15-20 pieces (posters, videos, memes and others) daily to be sent out via Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter. “We also have 3-4 LED-mounted vans, which travel across constituencies and telecast speeches via FB Live,” says Nirmal Kumar, state president IT and social media.

Seeman-led NTK had a live event on YouTube where all 234 candidates were introduced. “It had four million views,” says IT wing secretary Madhan Nedumaran.