Preface and Acknowledgements

Summary

This book draws upon a roughly decade-long research project undertaken as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. The intellectual inquiry driving this research first took root in the summer of 2013 as the campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha election was gaining momentum. As Narendra Modi was appointed as, first, the chairman of the BJP's campaign coordination committee and, then, as the party's official prime ministerial candidate, it became clear that the 2014 election campaign would be like no other. In the weeks and months that followed, surreptitious and ostensibly non-partisan Facebook pages, Twitter (now X) handles, and YouTube channels amassed a cult-like fanbase and began spewing content that ranged from half-truths about the ‘Gujarat model of development’ to blatantly communal propaganda. Shared under the guise of anodyne political humour or as the legitimate rants of the angry Indian voter, this content gradually made its way to my daily social media feed and that of other urban middle-class voters. Next, shadowy organisations such as the Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) and India272+ emerged on the landscape seeking to recruit digital volunteers for their campaigns. 3D hologram rallies and a countrywide digital ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ arrived hot on the heels. Friends, family members and former classmates who were once entirely aloof from the humdrum rhythm of Indian politics were now active participants and spectators of the campaign, enthusiastically imbibing the BJP's digital propaganda. It is with this purpose—to better understand what went behind the making of India's first ‘social media election’—that I began data collection in the summer of 2014. However, social media, as my fieldwork would soon lead me to discover, was only the tip of the iceberg.

Gradually, the object of my inquiry expanded to encompass a wider network of actors, institutions and practices that have come to redefine the contours of election campaigns in India. This was the world of campaign strategists, political consultants, pollsters and social media trolls. I also realised that this could no longer be narrated as a story about the BJP alone; this was about a new grammar of election campaigns that had been adopted by nearly all political parties in Indi