Bhajans to Bollywood: Reels take over parties’ online poll campaigns

NEW DELHI: A 30-second montage of video clips flash past. They show Congress leader Rahul Gandhi engaging with a diverse set of people during a string of campaign rallies. This flurry of visuals is embellished with the occasional glittering heart animation that splashes across the screen and is set to the wildly popular Blue song “One Love”, a reference to the party’s “Mohabbat Ki Dukaan (shop of love)” poll message.

The reel – which reached 400,000 people and was shared more than 30,000 times – is part of an ever-expanding field of short videos that have flooded social media and dominated much of the online discourse in the ongoing general elections.

Political groups have relied heavily on these short videos ever since TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts captured the Indian imagination during the pandemic. And the ongoing general elections will be the first national polls where they have been used to engage with voters.

The choice of music used in the videos, though, is often make-or-break and serves to underscore ideological differences between political parties.

According to the data released by the Election Commission of India, 18.5 million registered voters are in the age group of 18 and 19. These reels get views ranging from a few thousand to even lakhs and usually perform better than the reels with no trending song as its background music.

Shivam Shankar Singh, author of How to Win an Indian Election said, “The parties are experimenting with reels and videos because this medium was not really available in 2019, so they are trying to see what works with the younger generations and what does not. ”