After 2010, the social media (henceforth SM) has come up an alternative form of spreading the message in the world. The main stream media (henceforth MSM) has been unusually anti-right since a long time, and this is one of the primary reasons a lot of Indians have now started to rather trust this new medium.
Narendra Modi was hardest hit by the MSM. Not only was the un-parliamentary phrase of "Maut Ke Saudar" or "Merchant of Death" phrase promoted by MSM, he was repeatedly pinned on 2002 Gujarat riots in every interview, repeatedly sidelining his good development work (my Gujarati friends have given genuine good reviews of Modi's work) and his image took a bad hit due to this. Modi, not being very good in facing tough questions, foolishly used to stay either silent or, used to run away from these interviews.
For example, when he ran from Karan Thapar
or went silent with Vijay Trivedi
Narendra Modi is a great orator, and he doesn't do that well in Q&A. The reasons may be many, but I would let the reader think over that.
Moving on, Narendra Modi understood that MSM would not do him any good. Now, on SM, there was some genuine appreciation coming for his good work in Gujarat, and there were many hard core Hindus who saw a saviour of Hinduism in him. Hence, he thought of en-cashing this medium. Some readers would think otherwise, that Modi first started the SM war, but I can't agree with them. Anyways, my point is not to discuss on this chicken and egg scenario. The bottom line is, soon Modi turned to SM to save his face, err, for image makeover.
The results in SM were awesome, splendid, stupendous! Soon there was a large online army for Narendra Modi, defending him, selling him, and doing his marketing over Internet. Be it Facebook, be it Twitter, there was Modi everywhere! Dozens of pro-Modi Facebook pages sprung up. There were 100s of pro-Modi tweeps as well.
The stupidity of MSM worked as a catalyst as well. Sagarika Ghose ended up calling genuine patriots as Internet Hindus, which a lot of people took as compliment, not a comment. Barkha Dutt lost herself after Radia gate as well. I was called a "Right Wing Fascist" by her and blocked, for no good reason. :-). These fools (yes, fools), pushed more and more people towards the Modi camp.
As all this was happening, there was another neutral camp on Social Media building up - The Anna/IAC supporters. Now, most of these people were true patriots. They didn't ask anything for themselves. Few of them were indeed BJP supporters, but for them it was always country first. Modi camp had no issues with this group, and both existed happily, taking on Congress and the MSM, which by now had a new name called #PaidMedia.
Come 31st December, 2011, the political class (not just Congress), backstabbed the Janlokpal movement. Lakhs of hearts broke. Hard core BJP supporters didn't think there was any fault of BJP, however a lot, and a LOT of people gave up on this political class all together. After another fast later, everyone gave up on requesting, pleading, begging from the political class. Enough was enough, and IAC gave way to AAP.
The SM story was going to be changed now.
Modi camp still didn't have much problem with AAP, as AAP was exposing Vadra, Khurshid etc. Things changed dramatically when AAP took a stand that Modi is not totally clean as well, and he has been giving undue favours to the Adani group. Later, the CAG report indicted the Modi government in irregularities as well, and now a clear line between AAP, and Team Modi was drawn.
Yes, I am not using the word 'BJP', as BJP doesn't exist on SM. Only Team Modi does.
The dominance of Modi camp continued anyways. AAP was a new born baby and most of the people didn't have much idea about what AAP was. Most of the AAP supporters and volunteers were working on the building the party. Arvind Kejriwal was damn busy with Delhi, there was a media blackout on AAP after the Reliance's legal notice to news channels.
This was to be changed as the public opinion hugely favoured Arvind Kejriwal.
During the Arvind Satyagrah, the AAP team knew that no one was going to even talk about it. The AAP supporters started pouring in on Twitter. After a very long lull, one hashtag which was supportive of AAP trended on Twitter - #ArvindSatyagrah. This was only the begining. Later one more hashtag trended - #SwarajWharton, which was dedicated to the speech of Arvind Kejriwal at Wharton. There was a TIME poll for most influential person in the world, and AAP supporters trended #Vote4AK again. This hashtag featured in a program on a news channel.
The Twitter team of AAP was growing strength to strength. It was influencing a lot of people, and the Team Modi was now getting uncomfortable with this. Few surveys took place in Delhi, which showed that AAP is going to win the Delhi elections. The hoardings of AAP were taken down, posters torn, but Team Modi also wanted to deface AAP on Twitter.
So, they tried to trend - #AAPExpose, a flimsy attempt, which failed miserably. This failure even featured in firstpost. The idea of Team Modi was to spread stupid things about AAP using this hashtag, however the AAP twitter team smartly hijacked this hashtag, and started to tweet how AAP has exposed the corrupts. The battle was lost by Modi camp.
And this was starting of massacre by Team Modi.
Unable to take the loss, they have started to massively mark AAP supporters as spam, so that Twitter suspends their profile
This happened. Twitter suspended the profiles of AAP supporters, of course they came back after few days. However, the fear in the heart of Modi was exposed again. That same mentality to run away from the interview, or staying mum, or worse - suppressing the dissenting voice was shown. Nothing Prime Ministerial in it, I would say.
Coming to think of it, let us see what is the policy of BJP on conduct on Social Media:
Modi camp doesn't adhere to it. No wonder they are different than BJP. No wonder the Vajpayee's BJP is long dead.
The conduct with AAP is not an exception, when it comes to Modi camp. Even the dissenting voice within BJP gets the same treatment. Be it Advani:
Or Shatrughan Sinha:
And if you are a Bharat Ratna, awarded by Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, speaking against Modi, then be ready to get morphed photos of your daughter spread around. I am not posting it here, out of decency, but here are a couple of tweet:
The mouthpiece of Team Modi - NitiCentral, is of course obsessed with Arvind:
Now, for 2 days, #FekuExpress trended (a Congress handiwork) on Twitter. What was interesting was how Modi Camp took it. Bad losers as they are, they started blaming @TwitterIndia for that!
Role of @Twitter in trending wars: Is @TwitterIndia head's political bias showing? http://t.co/Z5aqJFGWGh
— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) August 13, 2013
And, last, but not the least - the calls to kill Arvind Kejriwal!
Bottom Line - If Congress has used MSM unethically, Modi Camp has used SM unethically. I have not found much difference in them. Congress has got 2011 regulations and 66A, Modi camp mass spams you and tries to take your account down, even if you are not abusing or trolling anyone.
Narendra Modi personally takes care of what goes on in SM. And to me, he has come out as a Paranoid, a coward.
This is one of the reasons why, Modi is unfit to be PM.
To read about the massacre on First Post, read this blog by another blogger.
