Pamela Philipose 
The centrality of media consumption in setting election agendas has been a hotly contested debate among media theorists. Garnering data from the 1968 US presidential election, Maxwell E. McComb and Donald L. Shaw had argued that the patterns of news coverage in newspapers, television and radio were “major primary sources of national political information” because they ensured that certain issues and personalities come to dominate public attention. Manuel Castells in later times was also persuaded about the important role played by socialised communication in “framing the public mind”.
The internet and social media invested these arguments with new possibilities since socio-technical networks could carry information not just from one source to many, but from many sources to many others, creating possibilities of the monological pattern of communication that had marked legacy media being replaced by the “dialogical flow with low cost means of communicating” (Michael J. Jensen).
Yet the blanket assumption that media can comprehensively influence electoral agendas should rightly be regarded as over-deterministic, especially in the complex Indian context with the multifarious factors that go to determine electoral outcomes. To realise this, we need only to remember the ultimate futility of new age communication techniques utilised by the Vajpayee government during the 2004 general election campaign, like SMSs sent on mobile phones urging people to vote for the BJP or the “feel good” mood that the India Shining campaign attempted to create. Mesmerizing as they were at that time, they failed to ensure that the ruling party retained power.
This cautionary lesson was forgotten during the Modi years that saw repeated election wins amidst the blare and glare of a 360-degree media spectrum. Both the 2014 and 2019 general election campaigns through which Modi crafted his majorities (282 and 303 seats, respectively), were so highly mediatised that it was easy to maintain that the prime minister’s control of legacy media and his much boosted presence on social media across platforms were central to his success. The indubitable winning formula seemed to be: Modi Plus Media Equals Victory.
What the 2024 verdict has done is to drastically upend this proposition. Modi’s media power structures have remained completely intact through this period of election campaigning. India’s legacy media was as loyal as ever to the Modi cult – the campaign saw the same Modi-centric headlines and the same saturation coverage on multiple channels of the 206 rallies he had conducted across the country. In addition, the prime minister’s personal website was buzzing with engagement; he had 98 million followers on X, a slot above Taylor Swift, two slots above Donald Trump; 90 million followers on Instagram; innumerable likes on Facebook; 26 million YouTube subscribers. So why did it appear, as this electoral season wound to its weary end and the words uttered at the doyen’s 80th interview faded away, that all this media attention was insufficient to achieve the expectations that both Modi and the media themselves had created?
Something certainly has shifted and it may be too early to fully understand the nature of this change. Three broad tentative reasons could be hazarded.
One, have we reached a saturation point in the mediatisation of the Modi cult that whatever the cult figure pronounces is rendered devoid of meaning to his audience? Consider the much cited speech he made at Banswara, Rajasthan, which he must have perceived as the ultimate Brahmastra against those he considered the natural enemies of his party. It failed spectacularly to ensure a win in this constituency. On the contrary, its candidate Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya sank like a stone in a seat which the BJP had won handsomely in both 2014 and 2019.
This defeat raises questions: Has the prime minister reached a point where the horizon of victory kept receding in several constituencies that the BJP had considered were in its bag? Was it the case that despite the divine aura he attributed to himself, the emergent god was seen to have clay feet?
Could it also be that Big Media conversations on the inevitable victory of India’s greatest prime minister had been stretched to such an extent that they had lost their elasticity like a frazzled waistband? Consider the way in which the idea of ‘Ab ki Baar, 400 paar’, which should rightly have been dismissed by the media as moonshine, or at the very least subjected to a strict reality check, was kept afloat throughout the duration of this election campaign. It began with the implausible claim made by the prime minister in late February, even before the campaign began, that the slogan had emanated “from the people”. It was interesting to observe the innumerable ways in which it was kept alive through two months of campaigning. It wound its way into prime time television shows which had titles like Sudhir Chaudhury’s ‘400 Paar Ko Le kar Modi Kitne Aashwasth?’ (How confident is Prime Minister Modi of 400 paar?) or Navika Kumar’s ‘J.P. Nadda Speaks on “400 Paar”’. It was the favoured question repeatedly posed to the prime minister during those 80 odd interviews he conducted. As for the Exit Polls, at least three pollsters ended up giving the BJP 400 plus seats.
Modi fatigue had clearly manifested itself, but was there also fatigue over the legacy media’s standard fare? This would appear to be the case. Indicating this were the cries of the “Godi media” that accompanied mediapersons like Anjana Om Kashyap, whenever they were in the field this time, to the extent that armed personnel had to be called in. Ordinary voters were no longer prepared to accept the political interpretations these supposedly iconic figures to interpret politics for them; they were shrewd enough to assess the credibility of what was being put out on these channels. In that sense, the Modi government by controlling Big Media through a tight leash, was actually placing it under a chokehold and potentially destroying its core public appeal. Sure, the proprietors of these concerns have raked in the moolah, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, but there could come a time when the law of diminishing returns sets in.
This brings us to the third factor: the search, especially among young adults, for alternative information sources. Political analyst Niranjan Sircar, in a conversation on ‘#ElectionWithIndependentMedia/Decoding the 2024 Lok Sabha’, noted that during his tours in western Uttar Pradesh this time, people seemed to have found other ways to access information, whether it was through YouTube or any other. Their effort was, of course, to gain more credible information, but it was also to access details more reflective of their own location and by extension their own lives. Sircar’s observations are borne out by data. In 2022, YouTube reported more than 40,000 channels on its platform in India that had more than 100,000 subscribers and this figure could only have grown in an election year. According to April 2024 figures put out by Statista, India, with its 476 million subscribers, is far and away the biggest consumer of YouTube content. The US comes a distant second, with 238 million.
While the top earning YouTube dudes in this country are into tech reviews, story-telling, and standup comedy, a significant section of them are political influencers. The Global Fact 10 research report, which came out recently, revealed that while people in the West still largely trust traditional mainstream media and are distrustful of content gained digitally, in India it is the other way around. Of course, given BJP’s deep pockets and wide networks, they were the first colonisers of this space but what has also happened are a fair number of extremely popular YouTube channels which mount strong critiques of the BJP brand of politics and its chief. The names of Dhruv Rathee and Ravish Kumar, with 20 and 11 million subscribers respectively, are of course conspicuous in this reckoning. They have become household names in the north Indian hinterland with their clear, unvarnished, de-sanskritised Hindi diction. For perhaps the first time in this campaign, we had large monitors mounted on village walls playing Rathee on loop.
The new Modi government may be constrained by its new coalition partners but it will certainly do whatever it can to rein in the incipient threat to the salience of its own narrative. Already a special multipurpose vehicle has been prepared for this purpose: the Digital India Bill, which the government claims is designed to protect users from disinformation and digital harms, could become the law of the land before long.
But this election has signaled that the people of India are far more aware of their right to freedom of speech and expression as well as credible information. This is something that a government with an authoritarian instinct would need to digest.
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Election news without the noise
There are at least 170 television news channels in the country, and on June 4 a sizeable number of them ran commentary on the counting of votes and ultimate verdict. The question was this: How independent were their narratives? Forget speaking truth to power, are these channels even in the business of speaking truth? One of the major “achievements” of the Modi government over its last two terms was its success in moulding media scripts to its will and counting day commentary is invariably part of this effort.
It is in that context that ‘#ElectionWithIndependentMedia/Decoding the 2024 Lok Sabha’, an experiment which began last year, needs to be viewed. Five independent news portals – The Caravan, Scroll, The News Minute, Newslaundry and The Wire – came together to provide alternative reportage and opinion during what was the most decisive moment of the election cycle for the Indian voter: the day of the verdict.
Independence of analysis became particularly valuable in an election where there was no obvious wave; where the massive money and muscle power of the ruling party was on full display embodied in an authoritarian prime minister who conducted 206 rallies across the country; and where the mind of the voter remained as inscrutable as ever, even as psephologists of all stripes attempted to mine it. Interpreting an outcome of such gargantuan proportions, when millions of votes from 543 parliamentary constituencies across a land mass of nearly 3.3 million square kilometers are being accounted for, requires the steadiness of patient analysis.
This was why the insights that emerged from this modest, crowd-funded venture often trumped the flashy technology-driven interpretations of Big Media news channels with its speech that came with hidden manacles. As a result, some of the topics discussed during the #ElectionWithIndependentMedia programme was spectacularly absent in mainstream fare.
The top trending chatter on June 4 was the accuracy or otherwise of exit polls. While Big Media generally found it too hot a topic to handle since they were so deeply implicated in the Exit Poll mess themselves, those participating in the #ElectionWithIndependentMedia conversations had no such impediments. Their rigorous scrutiny of such polls, with one participant suggesting that they should be kept only as a game and little else, was exemplary. Similarly, the way in which the ECI overlooked one of the most shameful aspects of the election this time – the active prevention of Muslims voters from exercising their franchise – came in for a thorough dissection, while being completely ignored in the Big Media counting day exercise. Two modus operandi of voter suppression were particularly highlighted: the use of coercive power, including police lathis, to keep Muslim voters away physically, and the removal of names from electoral rolls. Similarly, some of the most rigorous scrutiny of the shift in Dalits votes this time away from the BJP took place on the alternative platform. The emergence of the Constitution as an election issue for OBC voters – once again a unique aspect to the 2024 election – was completely parsed over by Big Media. I also did not notice any mainstream channel providing detailed assessments of the new social coalition in Uttar Pradesh between Muslims and Yadavs.
All this is not to say that an exercise like #ElectionWithIndependentMedia can compete with the speed and spectacle of big news channels. Since election verdicts have now come to imitate derby day, with all eyes on the fastest fillies, viewers will naturally gravitate to the fare offered on highly commercialised entities that treat the verdict as a horse race. However, it could certainly be said that a programme like #ElectionWithIndependentMedia has come to occupy an important, if niche, slot in the counting day media menu. Viewers will increasingly value it for its credibility, occasional brilliance of perspective, and most profoundly its commitment to all aspects of Indian democracy including fraternity.
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Some tweets that said it all
The results of Independent reportage
Academic and author Mukul Kesavan tweeted: ‘Critically, this result vindicates the remarkable reportage and editorial independence of the rare newspapers and online news platforms that held this predatory regime to account, among them the Caravan, Scroll, the Wire, the Deccan Herald and the Telegraph, Calcutta.’
Another tweet, this time from the founder-editor of the News Minute, Dhanya Rajendran: ‘Journalists who actively promoted Hindu-Muslim divide, show after show, article after article, may suddenly discover secularism and more things now. Good. But one should never forget what they did, because they will go back to their old ways at the first opportunity.’
The Wire interviews
Wire viewer, Dipankar Haldar wrote in: ‘I watch your channel many a time. I have watched the interviews conducted by Karan Thapar. Besides his diction and dialect, his take on current affairs and the manner in which he uses his knowledge to put probing questions to his subjects are quite interesting to me.
‘But I would like to mention that your other anchor, Arfa Khanun Sherwani, tends to take a polarized view on politics. We Indians have one thing in common — lack of harmony. Even after 75 years we divide the nation on many lines, religion being one of them. As a student of law and economics, I believe this divide should have been restricted to that between Haves and Have-nots. In any field you can see prosperity and disparity. Be it for Hindus or Muslims, or for that matter any religion. Here, the sun shines equally for all but the heat seems to be on the poor. In this context, the programmes conducted by Sherwani only projects a specific community being at the receiving end. As a matter of fact Muslims are facing the same issues and problems faced by other communities as well.
‘In Bengal, Kazi Nazrul Islam is as revered name as Rabindranath Tagore, in the West we respect Sahir Ludhianvi as much as we do to Neeraj. Again the sun shines equally on all in this aspect too. All I am requesting is moderation in thought process and reporting for a just cause.’
Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in