PM Narendra Modi and His Twitter Governance: What’s It All About?

No matter how niche and exclusive you might consider yourself, you can’t stay away from the magnetic power of the social media for too long. Today is the age of the mango people, if they don’t want you, you’re finished. Social media has strengthened and toppled people over for as long as we know it. One of the world’s biggest example is reality star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian and how she has used social media to up her status since the time she appeared on reality TV.

Today, we’re going to talk about someone closer to home; our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Just like you, Narendra Modi likes to keep a track of his followers, and the number of likes he gets on his tweets. Modi has reached a new milestone via his Twitter account; he now has 15 million followers, making him the second most followed politician in the world after US President Barack Obama. He is also India’s third most followed person on Twitter after Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachan, now that’s saying something.

Before PM Modi there was Shashi Tharoor and his infamous tweets, so he’s not the first Indian politician to use the Twitter platform, but he is definitely our country’s first PM who has done so. His digital presence has heralded the idea of ‘Digital Governance’ and ‘Digital Diplomacy’ in India. Ever since his ‘golden tweet’ after his victory in the Lok Sabha Elections, his presence on Twitter has increased so much that he has the five most shared tweets of all time in his list of achievements on social media.

Here they are :

Let’s talk a little bit about how the idea of ‘diplomatic governance’ is being promulgated via Twitter. There’s a reason we all know about #SwachchBharat, #MannKiBaat and #SelfieWithDaughter. Modi cleverly used the social media platform to show the benevolent side of himself with all the above hashtags becoming pretty popular along with the idea behind it. Whether you agreed with it or not is another topic altogether, but the fact remains that the message got through to the intended masses.

Here are a couple of Tweets that come under the digital governance idea :

Moving on to ‘digital diplomacy,’ PM Modi has been keeping his powerful and famous friends very close on social media, his tweets are as celebrity-like as it gets. Have a look:

Modi is striking a chord with the youth, the people have an opinion about their PM, what more can a self-proclaimed ‘people’s’ PM hope for? .

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, middle, takes a selfie next to Sheikh Hamdan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

Is it good or is it bad? We don’t know, but we definitely have an opinion. He has a plan to reach out to his people, he’s crafting his public image very carefully via a not so subtle social media website for youngistaan. Let’s just hope he can rise above his celebrity status.

Have a strong opinion about this? Comment below and share it with us.