Alongside mainstream social media, citizens use “TikTok” to spread the “Chowkidar” movement

Since the general election of 2014, the impact of social media on political campaigning has been tremendous. It has come out to be the quickest and the most direct way of communication between a political candidate and the potential voters. In today’s time, one has to win the digital war before winning actual ground battle.

PM Modi has established himself as the King of social media. He is the third most followed politician in the world on twitter with 46.5 million followers. His Facebook outreach is also massive with 43 million likes. Modi and his team have used social media in innovative ways to maximise their reach among the young voters during the campaign. After taking the Twitter world by a storm, PM Modi has established himself on Instagram in an unprecedented way. He is the most followed politician with 19.4 million Instagram followers.

Many publications around the world said that 2014 marked “India’s first social media elections”. When Narendra Modi won the general elections in 2014, the UK’s Financial Times called him “India’s first social media prime minister”.

The extent of PM Modi’s social media following is such that users need only open their accounts to be updated with the trends. BJP government’s current campaigning is off to a phenomenal success due to the extent of the social media following. The most recent initiative, the “MeinBhiChowkidar Movement” is off to a big hit. In the movement, PM Modi is calling everyone who is fighting corruption, social evils and working hard for the progress of India, as watchmen.

Users have made it a very popular hashtag on Twitter and Facebook and have even updated their usernames accordingly. Within hours of its launch, the “MeinBhiChowkidar” campaign became a top worldwide trend.  It has already garnered more than 1.5 million tweets so far.

After the phenomenal success of the mainstream social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the users have taken to a new platform- TikTok. It is a media app for creating and sharing short videos. It’s a platform used by people to share videos of themselves while lip syncing to a popular song or a speech. Recently they have started doing the same for PM Modi’s chowkidar movement.

The word ‘chowkidar’ was first used in the poll campaign ahead of the 2014 general election by PM Modi. He had then promised to work as a “chowkidar” to guard people’s money if voted to power. Now, the trend has again gained momentum with not just PM Modi using the tag but also encouraging every Indian who despises corruption, to use the tag.  All the cabinet ministers in the government have added the prefix “Chowkidar” to their username, signifying the allegiance to the cause. 

In his tweet, PM Modi shared a video titled “Take The Pledge”, urging people to join Modi on March 31 at 6 p.m. for a video programme titled ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar”.

The campaign has had a wider reach, users through platforms ranging from Twitter to Facebook to the most recent, TikTok have made the trend viral.

https://twitter.com/rajutiwary85/status/1014898941534429184

The most recent social media outreach through TikTok videos:

The universal popularity of the campaign shows PM Modi’s connect with the citizens. The BJP government doesn’t even have to purposefully campaign anymore. Like-minded people are doing the job for them. It’s a movement that is spreading awareness as to the aristocracies of a corrupt government and urging the people to choose their enlightened path.