Tracking an IT cell in Karnataka: Posts every hour, dedicated fan pages

Online campaign teams are present across constituencies, with every party from the BJP to JD(S) employing them. We track one of them.

Congress supporters at an election rally. (Photo: D K Shivakumar/ X)

Since mid-March, a team of 20 people between the ages of 21 to 35 have made four rooms at an upscale hotel in the heart of Mysuru their home. The team has been hired to run the online campaign for Mysuru-Kodagu Congress candidate M Lakshman and Chamarajanagar candidate Sunil Bose; it’s the final few days of the push as the two seats vote on April 26.

The routine of the team, whose members talk on the condition of anonymity, is packed. By 7 am, when the day’s schedule of the candidates is known and has been communicated to teams working on the ground, the first set of videos and images are put out. The goal is to post every hour, across all official social media accounts. Throughout the day, footage from the two campaigns keeps coming in and the editors in these rooms decide the music, captions and messaging that will best capture their candidates.

At 7 am on April 19, the video editor who does not want to be named can be seen sorting through the footage of BJP Musuru-Kodagu candidate Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, filtering what can be used for a video so as to juxtapose his and Lakshman’s poll pitches. He also sends some footage to, what are unofficially called, the “troll army”, dedicated specifically to critique the opponent online.

The supervisor describes the workflow. “There is a creative content writer, and a video and photo team which travels with the candidates. Along with this, there are video and photo editors and individuals dedicated to amplifying the message at local levels. There is another team which focuses on trolling and fake messages,” he says.

A member of another team says the troll groups often work through VPN servers, so that they are not accessible.

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Another member of the team who has been working in the political online campaigning industry for six years says they usually start operations months before campaigning officially begins. However, the work for these elections started off late because of delay in announcement of candidates. “We spend two-three months collating information and data of the candidate and opponents. We track the opponents, see if they are making any controversial speeches or something else we can use in our campaign…Videos are edited and kept ready. As the campaign begins, we start putting them out. We also create many fan pages for our candidate and the content there is also planned.”

The supervisor says they make the biggest impact on WhatsApp. “Even before the opponent notices, the damage is done.”

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He cites the example of the hashtag “Nikhil Yellidiyappa (Where are you Nikhil)” that became popular ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. It was a reference to JD(S) leader and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil Kumaraswamy, who was contesting from the Mandya seat. It was meant to signal that Nikhil was inaccessible.

“The JD(S) never recovered from it. A lot of their money and time went in clarifying it,” he says.

Independent K Sumalatha, who has now joined the BJP, had gone on to win Mandya by a margin of 1.25 lakh votes.