Indian PM Modi's new social media strategy: Emojis, elections, 'Money Heist'

A reference to the popular Netflix series Money Heist to slam alleged corruption by a Congress lawmaker.

Pictographs showing faces with tears of joy, and so many 'warning' emojis.

These are passé if they appear on an influencer's social media feed. But the person here is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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The tone, tenor and colourful language in the recent social media outreach deployed by Modi ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections haven't gone unnoticed.

The season of elections in South Asia will conclude in New Delhi's corridors of power in the summer of 2024. Bangladesh is voting in January, Pakistan in February and India by all tentative estimates, in April andMay. The calendar is packed.

While the old-school election campaigns with chest-thumping rallies are expected to dominate the news cycle in the coming weeks, much of the electoral fate of the South Asian capitals remains deeply connected to the use of social media by the leaders in power and their principal challengers.

Over 600 million eligible voters in India are aged between 18 to 35. The politicians are now adapting to the way youngsters — a massive voting block India — interact, and their methods of communication are partly redefining the politician-voter outreach in the world's biggest democracy.

Just within last week, the Indian Prime Minister Modi has stirred the pot on social media. First by posting a banner headline of a Hindi daily with a blend of tears of joy and 'warning emojis'.

"The countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest 'speeches' of their leaders...," Modi wrote on X, formerly Twitter, while slamming the ₹350 Crore ($42mn) cash howl at the premises linked to opposition Congress party'slawmaker Dhiraj Sahu.

"Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi's guarantee," Modi posted on X.

On December 12, Modi reposted a video published by the X handle of Bharatiya Janata Party which drew parallels between Sahu's cash howl with Spanish Netflix crime drama Money Heist. "In India, who needs 'Money Heist' fiction, when you have the Congress Party, whose heists are legendary for 70 years and counting!," Modi wrote.

"He (Modi) is keeping it funny," said Adarsh Pandit, a New Delhi-based political strategist, when asked about the revamped social media outreach from Modi's account on X, formerly Twitter.

"This is how the people in their 20s or early 30s talk over social media. Most of our messages are just the emojis. Modi is simply bringing down his social media handles to the youth in the language they understand without being undignified."

Pandit, who was one of the key political strategists behind the BJP's win in the recently concluded state elections in central India's Chhattisgarh, addedthat taking on opposition through social media is not exclusively a Modi construct. "So many leaders in the West, be it Boris Johnson or Hillary Clinton use the social media to attack opposition black-and-white."

Pandit contends that Modi's revamped social media messaging is an attempt to ensure that the focus of national discussions ahead of 2024 polls "remains entirely on him."

But it's not just Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party who have deployed social media to target the younger demographics. The Opposition parties have blended viral trends and memes to attack Modi administration.

"Congress and Aam Aadmi Party have done quite well in their social media outreach," Pandit said.

"The BJP has frontrunner advantage," he added, notingthat it's the distribution part of the social media outreach where the BJP has an edge over opposition.

Since the early 2010s when the access to social media was beginning to shape up the public sphere in India, the BJP has created social media channels to distribute its messaging at "each and every polling booth".

"While the opposition can match the BJP on the content part. They have not been able to match against the distribution angle," Pandit said.

"That party structure is not there with any other party but the BJP. It is one thing to create good content but it is completely different to disseminate it to the basic of all levels. That's where the BJP wins," he added.