Inside Meme Factories Of Rival Parties

Battle for Delhi rages not on streets but on social media as AAP, BJP, Cong unleash a digital tsunami targeting youth voters

- Gulam Jeelani, Isha Gupta and Pankaj Jain

ON THURSDAY, the official Twitter handle of Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi unit shared a meme titled ‘Civil War on Subsidy,’ highlighting the alleged differences between Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari and MP Gautam Gambhir over the Kejriwal government’s sops.

Gambhir took no time hitting back with his own meme – ‘Real Civil War. Not a fake manufactured one.’ It showed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as the central character with pictures of four of his former colleagues – Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas and Shazia Ilmi – around him.

Within hours, AAP responded with another meme featuring five BJP leaders to underline BJP’s reported indecision over choosing a chief ministerial candidate.

The social media slugfest being played out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — with the ostensible objective of wooing Delhi’s more than 3.1 million voters aged between 18 years and 30 years — is the new virtual warfare that is exploding with the Assembly elections just three weeks away. The choice of arsenal in the latest round of exchanges is live videos on Facebook and Instagram, apart from, of course, scorching memes.

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Each of the three leading parties in Delhi has deployed a dedicated team of content creators whose sole aim is to conquer mind space on cyberspace, 24 by 7.

Apart from Twitter, the digital campaign teams of the three parties are actively promoting content on other leading social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, besides WhatsApp. AAP’s Delhi Twitter handle has more than 100,000 followers, BJP Delhi has more than 565,000 followers while the Delhi Congress has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. On Instagram, BJP Delhi has 277,000 followers, while AAP has 181,000 followers on its central handle.

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