Academic Session (2021-2022)

DHARMASHASTRA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY
Jabalpur (M.P.) 482001

SOCIOLOGY

Topic: The use and abuse of social media sites networking

as a political campaigning.

Submitted by: Submitted to:

VIVEK VIBHUSHAN KOL DEEPLAXMI CHILE
BALLB/108/21 Assistant prof Sociology
 Acknowledgment

I wish to express my gratitude to my teachers under whose guidance I was able

To complete my project.

I am extremely thankful to the vice chancellor of our university PROF. V. NAGARAJ to

give me an opportunity to gain knowledge and do creative work which will result in
enhancement of my research skill. And I came to know about legislation in India.

This work would not have been possible without the consent support and

Guidance of Mrs. Deeplaxmi chile (Assistant Professor, Sociology).

Their level of patient and knowledge is something I will always aspiring.
Table of Content

Chapter 1
1. Introduction………………………..................................................................4
2. Research
Question………………………………………………..................................5
3. Research
Objective…………………………………………………………………….5
4. Research
Methodology………………………………………………………………..5
5. Literature review……………………………………………………………..5

Chapter 2
1. The use of social media sites as a political campaigning……6
2. Four main category of social media………………………….6
3. The abuse of social media sites as a abusing…………………6
4. Examples of social media ……………………………………7
Chapter 3
1. Effects of social media sites as a political campaigning……8
2. Examples of social media……………………………………9
3. Political effects ……………………………………………..9
4. Social effects…………………………………………………10

Chapter 4
1. Various ways to prevent social media abuse in politics…….11
2. Conclusion………………………………………………….12
3. Reference ……………………………………………………12
 Introduction

Websites and programmes that emphasise on communication, community-based

input, engagement, content-sharing, and collaboration are referred to as social
media. People utilise social media to keep in touch with friends, family, and
other members of their communities. The use of online social media platforms
in political processes and activities is referred to as social media use in politics.
All activities relating to a country's or region's government are included in
political processes and activities. The internet has provided communication
channels that are critical in the dissemination of news, and social media has the
capacity to alter not just the message, but also the dynamics of political
corruption, values, and conflict dynamics in politics. The use of social media in
political processes, global conflict, and extreme weather have all been made
possible by the use of social media.

Research Objectives :

This research project contains following research objective which will

study in This project to understand and know more about legislation;

1) To study more about social media

2) To examine about networking sites
3) To cramming about political campaigning
4) To research about how it impact on nowadays
5) To scrutiny about the sociological change due to this
6) To evaluation bout positive and negative impact of this activities

Research Question
1. What are the benefits of social media ?
2. What are the challenges of social media?
3. What are the benefits of networking?
4. Why online campaigning is necessary?

Research Methodology
This research is based on Doctrinal research. This research has
used the Secondary data for the study.

Literature review
1. The Internet and social media provide an opportunity to the
young population for political discussion through various
online groups, pages, and accounts. Bimber and Copeland
(2011) emphasized on the role of new media for providing
the platform for political participation and changing their
political efficacy. Schulz’s (2005) study suggested that new
media users are active in politics and political discourse.
2. The Internet has developed the interests toward politics of
its users and improved political efficacy of the respondent
which create their online and offline political
engagements. Jiang (2016) examined the effects of the
Internet on online and offline political participation. He also
investigated the Internet’s role in molding citizens’
perceptions of politics. This strong relationship creates
political efficacy and election interest among Internet users
and increases their political involvement (Jiang, 2016). The
use of the Internet has become the main source of political
efficacy and political participation, enhancing awareness
about voting and campaigning. New media also increases
the ratio of voters’ turnout among users.
3. It develops the approach which helps in voting and donating
campaign for politics (Larson, 2004). Users’ efficacy helps
 them to understand the political affairs in a better way
through the acquisition of political information from new
media. Kahne, Middaugh, and Allen (2014) investigated the
youth, new media, and the rise of participatory politics and
concluded that new media has given a platform to
individuals for information and communication with large
audiences and a means to participate in political activities.
The above-mentioned studies have been conducted in
developed countries and shared the similar findings.
However, marginalized and rural areas youth have been
excluded and neglected in the research domain. Our study
focuses on rural active youth in political process through
social media.1

Chapter 2
The use of social media sites as a political campaigning
During the Corona-crisis in 2020, the degree of
disinformation has reached a level which could endanger the proper
functioning of democratic decision-making. Crises have always been
a time of rising emotions and anxiety. These seem to culminate on
social media platforms, where citizens and self-proclaimed experts
give unsubstantiated advice dealing with Covid-19, or try to identify
assumingly guilty parties and fabricate conspiracy theories, through
amalgamating facts and false interpretations. The more exciting, the

1
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244019864484
even more weird ideas that are shared, including vaccine anxiety, and
doubtful, or even potentially lethal health 2

The four main category of social media

1. Social networking : People use these networks to
connect with one another and share
information, thoughts and ideas. The focus of
these networks is usually on the user. User
profiles help participants identify other users
with common interests or concerns. Facebook
and LinkedIn are good examples.
2. Media-sharing networking : These networks
focus is on content. For example, on you tube
interaction is around videos that users create.
Other media-sharing networks are TikTok and
Instagram. Streaming platforms like Twitch
are considered a subset of this category.
3. Community-based networks : The focus of
this type of social network is in-depth
discussion, much like a blog forum. Users
leave prompts for discussion that spiral into
detailed comment threads. Communities often
form around select topics. Reddit is an
example of a community-based network

4. Review board networks: With these networks,

the focus is on a review, usually of a product
or service. For example, on Yelp, users can
write reviews on restaurants and endorse each
other's reviews to boost visibility.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
2

S0377221720308249
Chapter 3
The effects of social media sites as a political campaigning

The Election Commission of India, ahead of elections had directed its state-
level bodies to appoint nodal officers who would be responsible for keeping an
eye on the spreading or circulation of fake news, hate speech and other unlawful
content across social media companies. The Election Commission of India had
directed its Chief Electoral Officers in states and union territories that any
violation of the model code of conduct on social media platforms should be
immediately reported to grievance officers of the concerned company and the
election commission.

In order to keep social media secure during elections, the commission had also
appointed three nodal officers. Their work was to examine the code violation
cases instantly and write to the companies to take appropriate action after
receiving approval from the director-general of media. In March, social media
companies Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google and Internet and Mobile
Association of India had submitted the voluntary code of ethics for the general
election 2019 to the chief election commissioner. The companies had agreed to
create a high priority dedicated reporting mechanism for the ECI and also
appointed dedicated teams during the elections for taking speedy action during
violations. The code of ethics was aimed at preventing inappropriate or
objectionable political advertisements.

The steps taken by social media companies to make elections safer are:

1. Facebook launched an exclusive feature for India named ‘Candidate

Connect’ which allows Lok Sabha candidates to record their election
manifesto in the form of 20 second videos.
2. Facebook planned to start an operations Centre in Delhi, which will
work with its offices at Menlo Park, Dublin and Singapore to monitor
election content.
3. WhatsApp introduced a telephonic tip line for its users to report
misleading content and fake news.
4. Microblogging platform Twitter expanded its political ads policy and
Ads Transparency Centre (ATC) in India. 3

3
https://blog.ipleaders.in/influence-of-social-media-and-technology-
in-the-indian-elections
 Examples of Social Media
Here are some examples of popular web-based social media platforms:
1) Facebook (Meta) : It is a free social networking website where registered
users create profiles, uploads photos and vedios, send messages and keep
in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
2) Linkedin : It is a social networking site designed for the business
community. Registered members can create networks of people they
know and trust professionally.
3) Twitter : it is a free microblogging service for registered members to
broadcast short posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast
tweets and follow other active users tweets using several platform
devices.
4) Wikipedia : it is a free, open content encyclopedia created through a
collaboration community. Anyone registered on Wikipedia can create an
article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles.4

Political effects

Social Media and their Effects Social media have influenced many
aspects of our life be it education, culture, administration, marketing,
businesses or politics. Social media have been able to make profound
impact by means of news, interaction, learning and marketing. Social
media has become an important source of news. Various news channels
tweet or give updates on significant happenings all over the world and the
news quickly gets passed around the networks in ways never experienced
before. It allows people to keep in touch more regularly. People in
different cities, countries and continents can keep in touch effortlessly
and it creates an opportunity to experience different cultures and
exchange opinions. Social media have also played a large part in fostering
learning. Children who start using the social media platforms develop
early communication skills, and generally become more literate. The
whole dynamics of marketing have been changed. Companies are
becoming more consumer-centered through interactions made over social
4
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/social-
media#:~:text=Social%20media%20is%20a%20collective,friends
%2C%20family%20and%20various%20communities.
 media. They are able to understand the needs of the market from the
market itself. 5

Social Media and World Politics In recent times, world politics have
witnessed lot of events, where social media played a significant role.
Social media led to major overhauling of the world politics. On one side
long standing regimes of dictators got buried under the weight of
revolutions, spearheaded by internet connectivity and on the other hand
voters got influenced by the campaigns on social media.

Social effects

Connecting local masses and reaching out to

individual voters who are not on the Internet is
difficult
• Politicians use this to make more noise and are
sometimes a way to encouraging polarisation
• Is a threat multiplier and can increase overall
suspicion, outrage, hatred, and violence because
of Misinformation and Disinformation
• Political minorities are using social media to
create a political gridlock6
There are various ways that can effects of socially
through media, todays we all know how these
media can manipulate the audience. Due to this
we takes longer time to decide what is truth.

Chapter 4
Various ways to prevent social media abuse in politics

Social media streams do not necessarily represent a more factually accurate

portrayal of what is occurring: their content may be misleading or contain
5
https://www.gjimt.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/3_Surjit-
Kaur_Manpreet-Kaur_Impact_of_social_Media_on_Politics.pdf
6
https://telanganatoday.com/social-media-and-its-impact-on-elections
outright lies, and content origin can be hard to identify. However, social media
is becoming increasingly important in political conflicts and contentious
situations, and politicized social media feeds provide a stream of real-time data
that can be analyzed in order to identify trends which signify increased potential
for outbreaks of political violence.

AI systems are capable of enhancing the work of peacebuilders in specific and

important ways: artificial intelligence provides unique tools for identifying and
analyzing emergent trends and threats within massive volumes of real-time data
on the Internet, beyond the capacities of most existing political violence early
warning systems.

We seek to provide journalists and prevention practitioners—that is,

policymakers, analysts, and human rights advocates in the atrocity prevention
community—with data-rich, theoretically-informed assessments of violence
escalation processes in near real time. This project aims to enhance existing
early warning and prevention efforts, and thus strengthen timely and effective
prevention by providing important and otherwise missed information.7

1. Data Ingestion Platform: We draw media content (political memes)

from a wide range of data within Internet social media postings on the
order of millions of instances, with parameters checked/confirmed with
country-specific case specialists. We work with local human rights
groups and experts to ensure that major actors, social media accounts, and
topics are properly identified.
2. Artificial Intelligence Analysis Engine: We conduct automated analyses
of the large collections of media content assembled at the data ingestion
stage by employing state-of-the-art artificial perception methods. Basic
features of images, such as style and content, are indexed and used to
establish connections and similarities with other images for further
querying and analysis.
3. User Interface: The final component includes an interface to ensure that
information can be shared quickly and efficiently with relevant actors,
such as the atrocity prevention and human rights communities. 8

CONCLUSION

7
https://kroc.nd.edu/research/artificial-intelligence-social-media-and-
political-violence-prevention/
8
https://kroc.nd.edu/research/artificial-intelligence-social-media-and-
political-violence-prevention/
The use of social media nowadays can be positive and negative. If we can kept
on eye in political campaigning of all the party then, they should also said
breech of privacy like that. Union of India case 2017, Right to privacy was
declared a fundamental right by Supreme court. So in india there is begin of
online political campaigning to conquer their seat election. Covid is the main
reason for online campaigning. The main pros of online campaigning is to reach
of people and effective ways. On the other hand cons like, hacking, incorrect
data, abusing like data breeching etc; In my opinion social media is good as
well as bad at a same time, depends on the person of using it for their to achieve
goal.