THE INFLUENCE OF ONLINE POLITICAL MARKETING ON VOTERS’ BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Voters’ behaviour could be seen as contagious, which arises from social mobilisation. Online social mobilisation, through political marketing has made huge differences in elections all over the world, including India. The balance of control in the conventional media gamut has transformed with the rise of the Internet. The ability of voters to have access to information, express views, discuss strategies, honour, identity and the brand of a political party has enhanced. Through this research, an attempt has been made to analyse the influence of political marketing on voters’ behaviour. One of the vital roles of campaign management is to assess and confirm the opinion of the electorate. This is achieved partly through sentiment analysis. Social media analytics has become prevalent for political institutions. Through this tool, it has been studied as to how political parties express and seek to alter their target audience’s sentiments. The paper has considered Delhi Legislative Elections (February, 2020) as the sample event. Tweets were analysed to perform sentiment analysis and assess the extent of alteration in voters’ behaviour both online and offline, via results.