THE INTRODUCTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN COMMUNICATION

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https://www.academia.edu/34857935/The_Digital_Agora_of_Social_Media_Introduction?source=swp_share 

‘Modi’fied India: Twitter Seva.

In partial fulfillment of

the requirements of

Theory of Mass Communication 

Abstract

       The introduction of social media in communications has revolutionized many sectors like business, marketing, networking, etc. Political parties are always in the front line in using new technologies for showing their presence to the voters. Social media is one such platform that allows politicians to stay in touch with the citizens directly and to hear the voice of citizens bypassing the media. This kind of new fast and efficient two-way communication between the politicians and voters has never happened before. Social media has the ability to network with many people and it also provides a platform to discuss or debate issues. This feature allowed social media as an efficient platform for knowing about public issues and resolving them. This kind of technology can enhance efficiency, transparency and affordability in governance. The study of social media governance in a country like India is apt because of its vast area, huge population and very diverse population; if this model works here this can be implemented in many different countries.

Introduction

       “Social media is a communication tool rather than an IT application. It is a tool that supports communication within social networks” (Landsbergen, 2010, p.135). Social media is growing tremendously because it allows individuals to more easily use human networks with interactive communication rather than just broadcasting the messages and it is more powerful because this medium not only supports text but also videos, audio and images (Landsbergen, 2010). Social media is considered as Web 2.0 as it not only allows the individuals to just view and use information provided with the internet, instead it allows people to express and share the ideas or information and create user generated content (Hwang & Kim, 2015). This interactive communication leads to two-way communication and also many-to-many communication. Because of this feature social media is used prolifically in politics, business, emergency services, marketing, advertising and media.

       Social media collaboration with politics has changed the face of political campaigns and it also helps in bridging the gap between politicians and voters - allowing two-way communication between them. Barak Obama was the first president who started using social media for political campaigns. Soon, social media effect captured the attention of the whole world. India was no exception, with 1.25 billion people., India is called the largest democratic country in the World. In 2014, the General Election in India was called the ‘social media elections’, almost all major political parties and politicians started using social media platforms to gain the votes of more than 200 million internet user in India, most of them were young and urban. Earlier, in India the rich and poor class were much interested in the elections, but with the entry of social media middle class population became more interested in expressing their opinion and began a discussion on issues they were facing (Khullar & Haridasani, 2014).

       After the 2014 Elections in India, many politicians have used social media to get in touch with the citizen using Twitter.  Paul (2007) defined E-governance as “delivery of government services and information to the public using electronic means” and he also suggested that using this kind of government for communication facilitates speedy, efficient, and transparent communciation between officials and citizens (Paul, 2007, p. 176). For any country effective governance is key to success. But in many developing countries the governance structure is characterized by large amounts of paper and file handling, and it is time consuming and has many levels of control and approvals (Paul, 2007). This type of governance structure creates a process where corruption occurs among government officials.

       India has inherited this kind of governance structure from the colonial period. So, corruption in various political parties and public sectors had been one of the major problems for India’s success and it is one of the reasons for lack of progress. “The creaky government machinery moves only when the lubricant bribe is applied” (Joseph, 2016, p. xiv). There is a lack of transparency and efficiency in public sectors, and common man has to give bribes in return for getting public services. Some wanted to rise against this kind of corruption but find it difficult to do so, and media is much too busy in covering the big news, and, no one cares for the common man’s problems (Joardar, 2015). But now the common man has a tool – social media: to raise his/her voice and question the government and public officials. Politicians approached the voters with social media during the elections, now using the same platform the voters are approaching the politicians for better public services.

       During the 2014 General election in India, the Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) extensively relied on social media to attract voters. Even after the election the BJP party continued its dominance in using the social media tools for better and transparent governance. All the ministers were asked to create accounts on social media like Twitter and Facebook. This helped the public to show their problems to the respected ministers directly. 

Statement of purpose

       The purpose of this paper is to examine how innovation of new social media tool like Twitter is acting as a medium for the public and the government to engage in the discussion for better governance in India. Twitter is being extensively used by the Indian politicians because it doesn’t require bidirectional confirmation and only 140 characters are allowed to convey a message (Conway, Kenski & Wang, 2015).

       In this paper diffusion of innovation theory and agenda setting theory will be used in developing a theoretical framework for the study of social media and how it is being used by the public for better governance in India. Introduction of social media platforms allowed the citizens to interact directly with government officials, the opportunity for the common man to impact policy agendas and perhaps even media agendas is redefined from no impact to the potential to greatly change government reaction time and reaction to the needs of the common people.

       A case in point was an event that occurred on July 15, 2016. When South Sudan was in the middle of civil war. Indian nationals living in Sudan were caught in the middle of this conflict and were desperate to get back to India. One such Indian national used Twitter to address their problem to the Indian External Affairs Minister Smt. Sushma Swaraj. The tweet contained a video from the war victims in South Sudan and within days 160 Indians and other people from other countries were airlifted from the Sudan. This kind of reaction time was nonexistence before the development of social media and its ability to provide two-way communication.

Justification

       Economist say that corruption in public sector will delay in economic growth, reduces trust, legitimacy and leads to political instability which in turn hurts the citizens (Chatterjee, & Roychoudhury, 2013). Trust is important in any kind of relation. In public administration, trust means maintain the balance between having officials who are responsive to public and having citizens who trust their official’s experience (Landsbergen, D. 2010). The congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governed India for a decade from 2004-2014, this party and members of the party were involved in many scams during their rule. Even the Congress party’s president Sonia Gandhi and then Ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were accused of corruptions (Joardar, 2015).

       Because of the types of scams, trust was broken between the UPA and the people. In the year 2011, Anna Hazare a 73-year-old freedom fighter started an anti-corruption movement in India. This movement was led mostly by youth and the middle class working people, who extensively used social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to gather the crowd for the support (Joardar, 2015).

       This may not be the first time, but the role social media played during this movement was very huge, many politicians and citizens came to know what impact social media could have on the public. Knowing this all, political parties started using social media to attract youth and educate middle class voters.

       The most interesting thing about the 2014 General elections in India was 150 million voters between ages 18 to 23 – years – old were qualified to vote for the first time and 65% of the population is under 35 years (Virmani, 2014).  India has 243 million Internet users, which is the world’s third largest population of Internet users in 2014(Goyal, 2014).  This data clearly shows the importance of youth and adult votes in the 2014 elections.

       Knowing their importance and from the experience of previous social media led social movements; every party realized the importance of social media usage during the election campaign. Clearly, BJP was far ahead and used social media extensively for the political campaigns during the 2014 general election in India.

       The parties have used social media to get in contact with the netizens. There was a gap between the politicians and the public that was filled by the social media. This gave a great opportunity for voters as well as politicians to get in touch with each other. After coming into power “Modi government started using social media tools for direct and two-way communication that push transparency, participative governance and reduce corruption” (Goyal, 2014).

        This paper will highlight how the social media governance will be a solution to transform India. This type of governance will help the politicians and citizens to work for the common goal--developing India.

       The theoretical frame work of this paper will be the diffusion of innovation theory and agenda setting theory. The Indian government has started “Twitter Seva”; ‘seva’ means service. The government will now deliver the service by accepting complaints through Twitter. According to Internet user’s data in 2016, India has 462 million internet users. This means roughly 34.8% of the people will be influenced by this “Twitter Seva”.

Literature Review

Historical Perspective

       After gaining independence from the British, India chose to be a socialist state. There was state monopoly i.e. the central government needed to have state government permission for everything – even for buying a car or starting a new business. This gave bureaucrats and political leaders a great chance to become immensely powerful and extremely corrupt. The economic growth at that time was 3.5 per cent annually. In 1991, with bankruptcy and foreign exchange crisis, India liberalized its economic reforms (Joseph, 2016). 

       After the economic liberalization, India opened its potential to the world and the economic growth in three years from 1994-1997 averaged 5-7 percent GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth. Twenty years later, its GDP averaged 8.5 per cent; it also survived the great economic depression between 2007-2009, with only minor fluctuation (Aiyar, 2011).  But it was consistently struggling to get rid of poverty from the country. Corruption has been one of the major problems for India while fighting against poverty. Paul (1997) in an article stated that the urban and rural households in India consider corruption along with poverty and unemployment as the three most common problems the country is facing.

       Even after the 70-years of independence, India is struggling with poverty, corruption and unemployment. According to Transparency Index (TI) a Berlin based corruption watchdog has put India at 79 rank out of 176 countries in latest Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International, 2017). “Bureaucratic corruption” is used to capture the whole spectrum of corruption in a single word. “The bureaucratic corruption stands for great variety of sins” (Hager, 1973, p. 199). In early days’ bribes were paid to get the wrong things done, but now a day the bribes were paid for getting the right things done at right time (Singh & Fuloria, 2014).

       Singh & Fuloria (2014) argue that there were many causes for the corruption. The big trend of corruption in government is due to lack of accountability in government offices. The employees in the government offices don’t perform to their merit. If the officers receive 100 files per week they may not even clear 50 files. So, someone who needs files urgently tries to pay a bribe to the officials to clear the files. They also argue that if at-least 95% of the files are cleared in the government offices in the specified time, a large extent of corruption can be minimized. According to the rules, all government offices in India should open at 9 o’clock in the morning and close at 5 o’clock in the evening. But many offices open between 10-11 AM and pack up at 3:30-4 PM in the evening with a one and half hour lunch break. Roughly they are working for 5 hours instead of 8 hours. Because of this, there was delay in the public services to the common man. Having no option left the common man would  pay bribes to the officials in order to get their work done in a timely way.

       Joseph (2016) in his book argues that for moving this kind of India’s creaky government machinery, bribes are like booster shots. The only thing the common man has to do is to have the right amount of cash and to know the right middlemen for getting things done. He defines middlemen as the bridge between the common man and the corrupt and inefficient government officials. We can call them lobbyists or opinion leaders or political leaders; they have a very profound role in the day-to-day life of many ordinary citizens.

       Krishna (2011) argues that because of the huge population and vast area in India, the political parties and government services don’t reach the grass root level – especially people living in villages. So this middleman or “naya netas” (new leaders) are generally between the age of 25 – 40 years, with some formal education and can communicate effectively with the officials. They will help the people living in villages and in the backward classes to get the access to the government welfare schemes, in turn they also help the political parties to transfer the information to the people during elections for gaining the votes. They were the crucial link between the political parties and voters. Both the national parties Indian National Congress and Bharathiya Janatha Party don’t have any permanent organization at the grass- root level. So these middlemen will fill the vacuum between the political parties and the voters (Krishna, 2011).

       If you think that this middleman is helping the poor, you are wrong; most of the middlemen work by taking the money. For example, let’s consider the government has sanctioned some $100 for Mr. X under some welfare scheme. If MR. X directly goes to the government office for his money, he may or may not get that amount. If he goes via middlemen, at least he may get some $70 – the remaining $30 will be shared between the middlemen and government officials. Joseph (2016) explains India’s social welfare schemes looks very impressive on paper, but when it comes to the ground level they are devastating. According to the Planning Commission of India study, only 16 paise (16 cents) out of one rupee ($1) reach the targeted poor, the remaining 84 paise (84 cents) is for paying salaries and leakage for bribes. He says that many studies show that about 25% of the money intended to the poor reaches the middleman (Joseph, 2016).

       By taking the above-mentioned things into consideration, one can say the middlemen, between the public officials and the ordinary citizens is a flourishing industry in India. They don’t pay taxes, no recession effect. Anyone can be a middleman if they have good social contacts and apart of all no educational qualifications is required.  A significant amount of India’s economy goes into these middlemen’s pockets as a black market economy; which is detrimental for the development of the country. Even the political parties need this middleman for bribing and influencing the voters during the elections, and organizing the crowds for unnecessary protests. They have a huge role to play in the day-to-day life of citizens in India (Joseph, 2016).

Flow of information in traditional governance

Figure 1: Flow of information in traditional governance

Sender

       The government and the government officials take the place of sender in this model. They send the information/funds/welfare schemes to the citizens.

Receiver

       Citizens take the place of receivers; they receive the information/funds/welfare schemes from the government via government officials.

Medium

       Citizens have to go to the offices and meet with the officials to get the required information/funds/welfare schemes they want.

Middle men

       Middlemen are like a link between the officials and the citizens. Here is where the corruption starts, as mentioned above the inefficiency in the government officials encourages the citizens to take illegal paths for getting the things done in a timely way. So citizens approach the middlemen paying bribes. Middlemen can be any one like peon/attender in the government office, or may be friend/relative of the government official who can get the work done with in less time.

Feedback

       Here there is lack of feedback and transparency in the government offices. The media won’t report the individual problems of the citizens; it is too busy in covering the major issues. Even though the citizens report their problems to the officials, they are not sure about the justice. This further encourages the officials and middlemen to practice corruption.

       So there is a need for the efficient and the transparent system in the government offices where the citizens meet the officials directly and they get their works done in right time, bypassing the middlemen.

Empirical Research

Agenda-Setting Theory

       Agenda is the list of issues categorized and discussed based on the priority (Merilainen & Vos, 2011). According to DeFluer (2010), agenda means an issue that some group may feel as important. In case of media both the meanings are valid i.e. agenda setting means the presentation of news by the organization and includes which stories to let through the gate and how they should be presented in the medium (prioritizing the news). Therefore, DeFluer (2010) defines agenda-setting theory as “A theory regarding the decisions as to where the story should be located in the news report – giving it greater or lesser prominence – is called the Agenda-Setting Theory” (p. 160).

        McCombs & Shaw (1972) conducted a content analysis and interviews with individuals from the Chapel Hill County during the presidential election campaign. They discovered that media was setting the agenda of public – what media shows as important during the campaign became important to the public. They found that there was a high correlation between the major issues emphasized in the campaign and carried by the media and the voters’ independent judgment towards the important issues. They also found that media have exerted a considerable impact on the voters’ judgment of what they have considered to be the major issues of the campaign. For the majority of voters, mass media was the only best and easy source to access the information about the political campaigns. As the most part of the research was done on sociology of political and mass communications, the psychology of the individuals was also taken into consideration. They found that the higher the salience of affect, the less likely individuals (irrespective of the political interest) try to gather the information from the other communications sources up on the issues – having more personal interest. If the issues that were personal interest to the individual were shown as important on the media, the individuals believe them instead of seeking information from other sources.

       For understanding Agenda-Setting Theory, one must understand the priming and framing concepts. These are the two tools the mass media uses to shape the audience’s view on particular issues (Merilainen & Vos, 2011). He also says that priming means media continuously repeats and stresses the topic and framing means media uses selective frames to give importance to the issue, by this way media influences the shape of the audience’s view. There are three components of agenda-setting theory: media agenda, public agenda and policy agenda. He argues that with the media agenda, journalists can influence the public and also the political agenda; media, public and policy agenda are interrelated.

Media Agenda-Public Agenda-Policy Agenda

       DeFluer (2010) says that the relationship between attention and interest is an important consideration in shaping the views of the audiences. Attention refers to the time and energy different kinds of people spend in following the news. Interest refers to the stories which an individual like to watch or read; it varies from individual to individual based upon their location in social structure, level of education and past experience. The public doesn’t consider every story as important even though the issue is given prominence; the public should have interest on the particular issue or topic or else the issue or topic will have little influence on the thinking of individuals. If the media presents the issue interested to the public in a particular way, they may change their opinion. So, DeFluer (2010) says that “on some issues, some people, some of the time, will sometimes form opinions or change their ideas when the media present the issues in prominent ways on their agenda” (p. 168). So, it is clear that media cannot be successful all the times in setting the agenda of the public. What if media can influence the view of the audience and set the agenda of the public? How can public influence the policy agenda?

       In fact, media cannot be the only source for a large number of people to change their opinion on particular issues or problems; there may be other sources where individuals get the information and there should be depth in the problem or issue which media portrays and the individual should feel it.  If the individual becomes aware that a problem exists and if many other feels the same way, the people discuss and try to influence the policy makers (either by protest or by discussing with the politicians). For example, ban on cigarette advertisements, environmental changes, same sex marriages so on) we can call this is as media influenced public’s agenda (DeFluer, 2010).

       Traditional news values are one way to set the agenda of the news media. They are timeliness: the fresh and important news to the public, impact: to number of people the news will influence, currency: the issues which have been in the spotlight of the public, conflict: the interest of public on one side of struggle, bizarre: something unusual this kind of news are sure winners, prominence: the news or stories about the prominent individuals in that area, proximity: the news happening in locally - which will have more importance. If we take prominence into consideration, the politicians are one of the prominent individuals in the society, so any news by them will be important to the media and this is how they set the agenda of the media (DeFluer, 2010).

       So from the above considerations, it is clear that there is mutual influence between the media, public and policy makers. We can call this as “Circular Agenda-Setting Function”.

If the position of the public is unclear or divided or not yet formed on a particular issue or problem, then the media will give less prominence to the issue or problem. Then there will be discussions and debates on the issue, until the majority thinks that there is a problem and it needs to be solved. Once the consistent public opinion is formed, the media again gives prominence to the issue. So, the process will be in circular form where the three – media, public and policy agenda - will influence each other mutually. Sometimes one of the three takes the lead and the others will follow (DeFluer, 2010). The problem with this is most of the time either media or politicians will set the agenda and public has to follow. This is because lack of networking and awareness on issues or problems to the public. So, in order to gain the consistent public opinion there need to be continuous discussions or debates, flow of information and networking within the public.

Diffusion of Innovation Theory

       The term innovation is defined as practice, object, or idea it should be new to a person; irrespective of how small or little it may be. If the person feels it as new, then it is innovation (Rogers, 1976). Diffusion means if a particular person in group/society takes up a new innovation there are chances that at least some or may be all the members of the group/society will take up the innovation (DeFleur, 2010).

       Diffusion of innovation theory was first studied by Rayan & Gross (1943) they conducted a research on how the diffusion of the hybrid seed corn has been adopted by two communities in Iowa. They studied how the new product was adopted by the farmers. They found that neighbors played an important role in influencing the other farmers to adopt the new seeds. They also found that it takes some time for an innovation to get diffused, when the hybrid corn seeds were introduced only a few percent of the farmers gave a trail. They even didn’t adopt it completely, but they cultivated in some acres. When the crop yielded good results they started adopting it. This adoption was done in many different ways. These initiators who used the seed are called innovators. The innovators influenced the other farmers to adopt the seeds. There were also other influencers like the salesmen, radio, and farmer’s journal but many farmers believed in their neighbors and started diffusing the seed. This shows interpersonal communication plays a crucial role in innovation of diffusion theory. This theory sheds light on how the innovation gets diffused, innovator play crucial role in the diffusion of innovation. Innovators are the ones who first use the product/idea, once they start benefitting from it, others start using it.

      Later on, the diffusion of innovation study is taken by a variety of fields like sociology, anthropology, education, medical sociology, marketing, geography, and most of all, rural sociology. But only in the early 1960s there was a sharp takeoff in the studies of diffusion of innovation by developing countries. In 1960, there were only 54 diffusion studies conducted in Latin America, Africa and Asia, but by 1975, over 800 studies were done in developing countries. The majority of studies were done in India (450 out of 800) (Rogers, 1976).

       Rogers (1976) stated that “the main elements in the classic model of the diffusion of new idea that emerged are (1) The innovation, defined as an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or other relevant unit of adoption, (2) which is communicated through certain channel (3) overtime (4) among the members of a social system” (p. 292).

Innovation

       It can be an idea, practice, or object that is new to the individual, this may also be an impulse to be new or can also be something which bring social change.

Channel

       For innovation to get diffused communication channel plays a crucial role. The information about the idea or object need to flow between the people or communicate. It may be through mass media or interpersonal communication or any kind of communication.

Social System

       Considering the elements which construct the society in which the adoption has to happen. The culture, religion, their social networking etc.

Time

       It refers to the length of the time that takes for an individual to adopt an innovation in the society.

Five steps in the process of diffusion:

       Rogers clarified that there were five major stages in the process of diffusion. They are awareness, interest, evaluation, trail and adoption (DeFluer, 2010).

Awareness

       In this stage the potential adopters learn about the innovation either by the mass media or interpersonal communication. Rogers also identified awareness as some kind of need – one who is not satisfied with the existence idea/object will be satisfied by adopting the innovation.

Interest

       Once the individual gets aware of the innovation he might find interest on it; if not the diffusion process will end at the second stage itself.

Evaluation

       It is the stage where the potential adopters have to think about the whether the innovation or need satisfies his needs. The adopter will think about the advantages of adopting the innovation in comparison to the disadvantages.

Trail

       The adopter will give a trail on the idea or product before completely adopting it.

Adoption

       If the adopter is satisfied in the trail method, he adopts the innovation completely. He may use it for temporary or permanent based on his need and interest.

Social media as tool for public to set the agenda

       It was clear that public or common man was no more a mere spectator in the circular agenda setting function (public agenda, media agenda and policy agenda). Public have a platform to raise their opinions or views on issues, they can even influence the policy agenda and media agenda now. Ma, Sian Lee & Hoe-Lian Goh (2014) conducted a survey to explore multi-level of influences on news sharing in social media. They found that individuals share news based on news preferences, if they find news interesting or news worthy, they are likely to share the news in their groups because of the self-perception of opinion leadership. But, because of lack of gate keeping, some may share fake news or rumors. The findings from this study shows that individuals are not much concerned about the credibility of news, if they find it interesting they are much likely to share it rather than cross checking the information.

       Social media provides a great platform for the public to raise their opinions, discuss and debate on issues. For example, NGO’s used to depend solely on the media to drive power for the public participation upon the issues. Merilainen & Vos (2011) conducted a content analysis and two semi structured interviews with the NGO’s like Amnesty and HRW to find out how they are setting the agenda of public by using the online sources – Facebook, Twitter and websites. Both the NGO’s choose the Facebook and Twitter because they found that public spend most of their time on them and it is also a good platform to reach individually all over the world. They found that both the organization use multi-platform strategy – interrelating the information from their Facebook and Twitter pages to their main websites, this allows public to take part actively in debates. These organizations are presenting short information through Facebook posts or tweets and triggering the curiosity of the public to learn more about the information. So, here the NGO’s are using social media to set the agenda of the public; at times even bypassing the traditional media. They are also providing a platform for the public, to debate or discuss on the issue with many other individuals. This kind of many-to-many debate and discussion on a single platform hasn’t been happened before social media.

       Shirky (2011) argues that public are gaining greater access to the information because of continues growth of complexity and density in the communication field. This will help them to engage more and more in public speech and also will enhance them in taking collective actions.

Usage of social media for the better governance

       We can find the roles of social media in governance, too. Bertot, Paul, & Grimes (2012) have conducted content analyses and website reviews on various e-governments website and social media platforms. They discovered that the inclusion of ICTs in governance will help to increase transparency and reduces corruption. These kind of communication tools will also facilitate collaboration between the government and members of the public in promoting transparency. ICTs can reduce corruption by promoting good governance, strengthening reforms-oriented initiatives, reducing potential for corrupt behaviors, enhancing the relationship between government employees and members of the public. They also found that the governments which lack transparency make corruption less risky and more attractive. This also incentivize opportunism and undermine cooperation, hinder social trust, and therefore development. So, many governments are willing to use ICTs for their office use. Social media provide a great opportunity for the many-to-many interaction as well as network building. This helps the governments to choose their target audience and work with them for the betterment. Despite lots of benefits in using ICTs for governance, there may be chances of being misused; many governments are using social media for self-promotion rather than tools of openness.         

       Chowdhury (2014) found that with the entry of social media, youth especially are expressing their opinion on the politics. According to him those who participate in political discussion are more likely to vote, which is good for democracy. Leichty, D’Silva & Johns (2016) found that in India, middle class families were never much concerned about the politics until the entry of social media. With the entry of social media, India has seen great social movements like the ‘Anti-Corruption movement’ and the ‘Justice for Nirbhaya movement’; where the citizens influenced policy agenda, which resulted in framing new law for the rapes convicts in India after the ‘Justice for Nirbaya movement’ and there was a new party born from the Anti-corruption movement called Aaam Adhmi Party (Common Man’s Party). This party won the elections in Delhi with in 48 days after they started the political party. This party used social media extensively for the promotion. In fact, they may be first party to ask the citizens about their experience with corrupted cops on social media.

        Khosla (2016) argues that democracy is defined as by the people, of the people and for the people, in the same way good governance means ‘good’, ‘welfare’ and ‘interest’ of the people. He provides eight major characteristics for the good governance, they are: participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follow the rules of law. He says with the e-governance and ICTs (Information Communication Technologies), those eight characteristics can be achieved. This ensures reaching to the poor, taking their voice into account and involving the most vulnerable voice in decision making. By doing all this good governance is achieved, and by involving people in decision making is very good for democracy.

       Honorable Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi, has a vision for ‘Digital India’ he strongly believes that digitalization is very important for transforming India. He defines e-governance as “easy governance, effective governance and economical governance” (Modi, 2015, p. 354). He went a step further and called for m-governance, i.e. mobile-governance. He thinks that m-governance is the step to reach the maximum people in India; because one billion people in India have cell phones and the smart phone usage was growing with double digit. So, he strongly believes that m-governance allows to put the governance within everyone’s reach (Modi, 2015). M-governance is the amalgamation of the mobile devices and the new media applications (social media). This application gives quick access to data, location based services and can create or use the information form anywhere and anytime (Jha, 2015).

       The use of social media for governance can replace the place of middlemen in India. A case in point, in India, middlemen have been a bridge between the farmers and the retailers. So, 75% of the final price was taken by the middlemen, leaving a very small amount to the farmers. In a state called Karnataka, the farmers started selling their products online, they browse the prices online quoted by the traders and the best price they want. This service was launched in 2014 by Rashtriya e-Market Services (ReMS); it allows the farmers to contact directly with the traders, avoiding the middlemen. Over 1.4 million farmers in the state of Karnataka are benefiting from this service. The ReMS also provides training to the farmers for the better usage of this new technology (Vijaykumar, 2016).  After seeing the tremendous success in Karnataka, P.M. Narendra Modi launched e-NAM (Electronic National Agriculture Market). By 2016, 153,992 tones of agriculture product worth 421 crores ($62,835,513) has been transacted on this e-NAM service. More than 160,229 farmers along with 46,688 traders and 25,970 legal commission agents have been benefited from this service (The Times of India Business, 2016).

       P.M. Modi once tweeted, “Technology can bridge gaps and connect communities. It can also deliver services that make a difference in our daily lives” (PMOIndia, 2016). So, we can say that technology plays a crucial role in developing India. ICTs have revolutionized the way people interact with each other, so using ICTs for the governance will provide efficiency and transparency in government services.

Twitter Seva

What is Twitter Seva?

       Seva is a Sanskrit word and it means ‘selfless-service’ in English, so ‘Twitter Seva’ can be reframed as service to the public using Twitter. From the name itself it is clear that serving the public should not be like a job to the politicians but it should be selfless-service.

How Twitter Seva works?

       Khursheed (2016) calls this a ‘customized live customer service delivery solution’ that means an effective mechanism for collecting large volume of tweets from the public about their queries and grievances, resolving them into tickets and assigning those tickets to the concerned authorities for real-time resolutions.

      To explain it in further detail, let’s assume a student from India at Arkansas State University has lost a passport, he tweets to the Ministry of External Affairs (@MEAIndia), people monitoring twitter in the Ministry office will prioritize the tweet with a ticket to the Indian Embassy in Houston (@cgihou). The officials from Houston take care of his problem and will report back to the Ministry of External Affairs. All this happens on Twitter where the citizens will be watching, so this kind of transparency and immediate feedback from the government will build trust in the public.

How popular is this service in India?

      Solving public queries using Twitter was first started by the Bengaluru police in August 2014 with the help of Twitter India. There was a good response from both the public and the officials so the government of India started Twitter Seva officially on April 21st, 2016. It may be in its infancy but it is doing a tremendous job in solving public queries, most of the issues will be solved with in 24 hours based on the complexity.

       Twitter Seva was handling 750,000 tweets across 11 large government partners with more than 7,500 Twitter handles supporting the delivery of services (Khursheed,2016). Twitter Seva is gaining popularity in the urban areas but it takes a considerable time to diffuse into rural parts of India, but as stated earlier if one category of the people started using this service it will be easy for the government to educate other categories and help them to use this kind of innovative services.

       Inspired by this service the Indonesian government started using it at the Central Java province. There has been interest from the Dubai police department and the jurisdictions in the Middle-East too (Senguptha & Prabhakaran, 2016).

How effective will be this kind of governance in a country like India with only 34.8% Internet penetration?

       Diffusion of innovation doesn’t mean that one should wait until the poorest one in the group starts using the new innovation/product. In fact, one can accelerate the rate of diffusion of the product/practice in any segment of the population using more intensive and appropriate communication channels (Green, Gottlieb & Parcel, 1991).

       The present statistics may not be satisfactory but the future appears to be very bright for the India’s Internet penetration. The P.M. of India himself is much interested about the digitalization of India; he is using every opportunity that comes in the way. In 2015, PM Modi meet with the CEO’s of the Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Qualcomm and explained them about the importance of ‘Digital India’ program, the four- CEOs responded positively. Google has planned to provide free Wi-Fi internet to 500 railway stations, Microsoft wanted to help the Indian government by providing low-cost broadband services to 500,000 villages and they also planned to make India a hub for cloud services, and Facebook started by enabling the Wi-Fi hotspots in rural parts of India (Thomas, 2015).

       According to a report by NASSCOM, India’s Internet penetration rate will increase two-fold at 730 million by 2020. The interesting point about this report is 75 per cent of the new internet users in India will come from the rural areas and they will consume data in their local language (Every state has its own language in India; officially there are 24 languages in India) (The Economic Times, 2016). Consuming the data in local languages will decrease the knowledge gap between the English speakers and non-English speakers. In 2009, Twitter India had experimentally started Twitter in Hindi language after the success of this in 2015 Twitter is now available in Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Marathi. Using Twitter in local languages will help the people to express their opinion in their own languages instead of learning English. This will help to decrease the knowledge gap between the people.

This kind of governance will be a great boon to countries like India because this kind of governance is cost effective and time effective, helps to improve governance, direct access to government officials and innovative methods of working.

Cost effective and time effective

       By social media, governance will become very easy. Social media will help the government, as well as citizens, to get in touch with each other rather than waiting long hours in offices and wasting their time. Most of India’s population is youth so even if this category of the people starts using the social media governance, it will become easy for the government to govern the remaining categories effectively and they can also teach them how to use social media governance. As Rogers stated awareness is a need and one who is not satisfied with the existing method will be satisfied when he/she adopts the innovation. So as more people are exposed to this kind of governance, the more they diffuse this innovation. Because of India’s huge population and less government officials, most of the government offices are overcrowded with people. This is one of the reasons why people approach middlemen for getting their work done very fast. So, by using this kind of governance officials can deliver information digitally and citizens can reach the officials through social media platforms from anywhere instead of going to offices.

       A case in point, in the city of Bengaluru, the police department was efficiently using Twitter for receiving complaints from the public. They have opened 160 Twitter accounts and have over a 500,000 thousand followers. With the help of Twitter India, the Bengaluru police uses ‘dashboard’ which automatically transfers the complaints to the handles of the jurisdictional police stations. The city police of Mumbai also started using Twitter effectively to bring awareness among the citizens of Mumbai on various issues like drug control, cyber bullying, women safety, and traffic rules awareness. They use twitter very often with eye-catching quotes and messages. Using Twitter for receiving complaints is cost effective and time effective for the police. Moreover, people can record the crimes with their mobile and can tweet to the cops – these videos will further be used by cops to take action on the criminals and also they can show this as evidence to the court.

Helps to improve transparency, participation and collaboration in governance

       Chun, Shulman, Sandoval, & Hovy (2010) argue that the transparency in governance can be achieved when the government disposes the information regarding the schemes, welfare activities, campaigns etc., rapidly to the public so that the public can utilize them. Participation can be achieved by increasing the opportunities for the public in decision making and policy making further to provide government with the collective ideas and knowledge. This kind of public participation with the government will improve the quality of decisions taken by the government. Collaboration can be achieved by collaboration of the central government with all the state governments, businesses and individuals to improve the effectiveness of governance.

Research Questions, Hypothesis and Implications

RQ1:  How are average citizens of India using Twitter to communicate with government officials?  You will need to write a little bit of information about each of these research questions. 

RQ2:   What topics are the primary reasons that India citizens use Twitter to reach government officials?  You will need to write a little bit of information about each of these research questions.

RQ3:   What are government officials’ reasons for using twitter to help the common person? You will need to write a little bit of information about each of these research questions.

RQ4:  Are other social media applications being used to increase communication between government officials and the common person?  You will need to write a little bit of information about each of these research questions.

Same goes for the hypothesis and implications. You are trying to tie together your literature review with these hypothesis and implications.  

Hypothesis 1: Social media platforms will help to eradicate the middlemen system in India - which is the main reason for the corruption and black money. Corruption and use of bribes is a common Further study will take into consideration of the organizations using social media for the governance and how they have managed to eradicated the middlemen system?

Implication 1:  The middleman system will disappear.  As Vijaykumar (2016) says that 1.4 million farmers in the state of Karnataka are using internet to sell their products online with the help of ReMS and it has effectively eradicated the middlemen. This system also helped farmers to get the desired prices for their products. Moreover, by doing this the legalization of traders can also be possible (most of the traders evade taxes in India).

Hypothesis 2:  Adoption of new methods of communication will help to improve the quality of life of India’s Citizens.   Using social media platforms will increase the opportunity for India’s people to improve their ability to communicate using a two way form of communication.  

Implication 2: Political parties in India will take views of citizens into consideration in framing the new welfare schemes and other related works done by the government. In a vast country like India political campaigning or advertising about the social welfare schemes are complex, costly and no guarantee that they will reach the intended audiences. So, effective usage of social media for political campaigns and for advertisements of the social welfare schemes will not only reach the target audience but also allows the people to give feedback. 

Implication 3: Major political parties in India are using social media for branding and for openness with the public.  Social media has provided a cost effective platform for advertising and contacting the voters easily. So, many politicians and the political parties in India are using social media extensively. But Bertot, Paul, & Grimes (2012) argue that using ICTs for the governance is very effective but governments despite of using them for openness they were more likely to promote their party brand.

Implication 4: Social media allows the citizen not only to receive the information but also to generate, it also allows people to discuss and debate on the issues with like-minded people. So, social media is encouraging the citizen to participate in the political activism. As Chowdary (2014) said that people who likes to share their opinion on social media and who patriciate in the activism or political discussion were more likely to vote. Taking this point into consideration, the further study will look for the relation between the usage of social media for political discussion and willingness of the citizens to vote.

Implication 5: Further study will be done on why people tend to share the news on social media platforms? What are the factors they take into consideration while sharing the news on social media platforms? Is the lack of gate keeping allowing the people to share the rumors and fake news? As Ma, Sian Lee, & Hoe-Lian (2014) stated that people tend to share or retweet the news based on the news preferences, if they find news worthy they are more willing to share in their circle because of the self-perception of opinion leadership.

Implication 6: Government of India is developing numerous application for the participation and collaboration of the citizens for better governance. So, in further study, will the citizens of India be willing to use those mobile applications effectively as they used social networking sites for the governance?

Conclusion

       Conclusions must address your four research questions, four hypothesis and four implications and how you might test them using a variety of research methodologies to include surveys, content analysis, experiments, in-depth interviews, thematic analysis, etc. 

Reference

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