Digital Influence on Participatory Democracy in India

• The UK’s ‘Leave.EU’ campaign used digital platforms to shape public perceptions and encourage voting for the EU’s departure.
• This trend is evident in India, where digital campaigns are central to electoral strategies by national and regional parties.
• The use of digital political advertisements by political parties can distort public discourse.

Economic Power and Digital Influence
• The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spent 52% of its total “party propaganda” budget on digital advertisements in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly election.
• The Indian National Congress spent 55% of its total “party propaganda” budget on digital ads.
• The BJP became the first Indian political party to spend over ₹116 crore on Google ads in just five months from January 2024.
• The use of micro-targeting, based on location, allows parties to reach specific audiences all the way down to the panchayat level in each advertisement.

The Narrative
• Third-party campaigners, a new phenomenon in Indian elections, operate in the background, armed with a mix of influence and manipulation.
• A study by the Lokniti-CSDS showed that these entities spent over ₹2,260 lakh in just 90 days leading up to June 29, 2024.
• The content propagated by these campaigners is often more alarming than the money they spend on it, distorting the democratic discourse and raising ethical and regulatory questions about their role in electoral processes.

Issues in Digital Campaigning
• The disparity in financial resources among political parties is manifested by their digital advertisement spending, particularly on platforms such as Google.
• There is an urgent need for’segmented caps’ on party expenditure, which would limit overall spending and ensure balanced allocation across various campaign categories.
• Content regulation is brought into focus by the role of third-party campaigners, necessitating strict expenditure reporting requirements and an independent agency conducting an audit of their content after each election cycle.
• Platformisation has led to varied content strategies across digital platforms, highlighting the need for uniform, harmonised regulatory frameworks to tackle problematic digital content.

Need for Reforms
• The task before us is to navigate this complex terrain, ensuring that technology enhances democratic ideals.
• To come up with robust solutions, we must move beyond the constraints of traditional political theories and build a body of literature that unravels the layers of the digital realm.