EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY : A STUDY OF DELHI ASSEMBLY ELECTION 2013

Abstract

The electronic revolution has made Social media one of the important tools for advertisement in the election. Social media has become a potent tool of expressing opinion worldwide. Even in an emerging economy like India, its growing impact is discernible. Its rise in popularity has made political parties think of its use as a means of both gauging and creating public opinion. The Delhi assembly in 2013 is a case in point. The present study aims to examine the impact of social media on public opinion, its significance as a measure of popular opinion and how it predicts popular opinion with the help of an evaluation of popularity on Facebookand its relationship with electoral outcomes. For this research 4,500,000 likes ofFacebook fan pagefor the month of December 2013 were taken into consideration. And the Political parties namely Indian National Congress (INC), BhartityaJanta Party (BJP) and AamAdmi Party (AAP), contesting for Delhi Assembly election. Linear Regression analysis method was used to analyzes the secondary data, the result indicates that 'Facebooklikes' of political parties and votes gained by political parties in Delhi Assembly election 2013 are positively correlated.