LAC+1000C+Project+-+Janes+Jeretic



Facebook in India’s 2014 Lok Sabha Elections by Janes Jeretic //During this month and the next, India will be holding the world’s largest democratic event; the election of it’s Lok Sabha or “lower house” of the Indian parliament. Considering how today’s technologies are involved in most of our daily activities, it was only a matter of time before a global social media such as Facebook got involved in political and social events of this category.// First, it’s important to understand what part of the Indian Government is going to be affected after these elections. Most countries only take importance on Presidential elections, but this is not the case here. India, as many others, has it’s the powers divided into executive, judicial (justice) and legislative (laws). The executive power is responsibility of the President, the Vice president and other institutions such as the cabinet, the executive departments and agencies. In the cabinet we can find another important character of India’s government; the prime minister. The Supreme Court and the public interest legislation compose the judicial power. Although the Supreme, although the Supreme Court has the final word when it comes to criminal cases, the public interest legislation or PIL can intervene if the case involves the community in general. Finally, the one in charge of the creation of laws in India is the Parliament or Sansad. This legislative body is formed by the president, the Rajya Sabha and, what will be elected during this year’s elections; the Lok Sabha. The lower and upper houses of the parliament have their members elected in quite different ways. As India is politically divided in 35 states (28 states, 6 union territories and one national capital territory), each one of these has it’s own legislative assembly, each of which elects a number of “Representatives of State” who, plus other 12 members picked by the president, constitute the upper house, house of the “council of states” or just Rajya Sabha. Now, India is also separated into territories called “constituencies”. There are 543. During these elections, Indian citizens will vote for one representative of each of these territories, plus two nominated by the president itself. Summing up, between April 7th and May 12th of this year, the biggest democratic event in the planet will be completed, meaning India’s election of their 16th Lok Sabha, or as it is also know, it’s “House of the People”. The election holds the mentioned record due to the amount of voters: 814 million people. It’s only natural then that the world’s biggest democracy comes across with the worl’s biggest social network. Facebook is the earth’s leading social community in these days. It has an incredible number of 1 billion active users, exceeding by much other social networks such as Tencent QQ (considered as the Chinese Facebook) with 712 million active users, Google + with 540 million, Twitter with 200 million and Instagram with 150 million. Although India is a country of traditions, social media and technology has found a way inside Indian’s daily lives. India has 100 million Facebook users who are active on the social media at least one time per every month. The number is clearly going up since only last August there were just 82 million monthly active users in the country. This numbers are no surprise since India has the third biggest Internet base (with more than 238 million users). But why is Facebook interest in the elections? In words of Facebook’s public policy manger, Katie Harbath: “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected, part of that is helping to connect citizens with the people who represent them in government. Elections are the first way that citizens have that opportunity to voice their opinions.” Since this numbers are so high, it was only natural that companies would realize this is an extremely efficient way to get to the voters, especially the younger segment which are over 23 million (considering only from 18 to 19 year-olds). So what is it that Facebook will do for India’s voters? Well, now Facebook users over the age of 18 (legal voters) will see a message displayed at the top their News Feed (Facebook’s main page) reminding them to vote when the time comes. Another message that reads: “I’m a voter” will be displayed and users will be able to, by clicking it, post a story to their profiles or timelines and share with their friends the life event. It’s believed this will not only encourage people to vote but it’s also a way of opening political discussions in the social media, not only on Facebook but in others such as twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. In fact, it has been recently announced that India’s largest software firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has paired up with twitter to create a “social tracker” called iElect for the elections, gathering data from users all over India to show poll results and encourage users to politely engage in political conversations with each other. Discussion is important an essential to any democracy, leave alone the world’s biggest one. //Sources:// - Press Trust of India, “Elections 2014: TCS ties up with Twitter to create iElect social tracker”, First Post. [] Viewed on 04/21/2014 - D. Mello, J (2011, July 26) //Explaining the Indian Election System//, Retrieved on 04/21/2014, from [] - Ankit Panda, “How India's National Elections Work”, The diplomat. [] Viewed on 04/21/2014 - Dpgupta_45, “How do elections work in India?”, Yahoo Answers. [] Viewed on 04/21/2014 - “Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites”, eBizMBA. [] Viewed on 04/21/2014 - “The Electoral System of India”, Indian Elections. [] Viewed on 04/21/2014