Campaigning on social media: Why it was so popular this election season

Kathmandu, Nov. 20: The song ‘Baa, KP Baa’ hasn’t really left the social media sphere since the eponymous CPN (UML) Chairman KP Sharma Oli released it amid an event at Thamel’s Lord of the Drinks (LOD) night club on November 11.

As of Saturday morning, the rap has been shared 5,900 times on Facebook and has received over 41,000 reactions.

Similarly, the ‘Oli Baa’ filter, which allows users to superimpose an image of Oli’s face on their own, was used to both show support and mock the former premier on TikTok over the last week. 

The song ‘Gau Gau Ma Oli, Sahar Sahar Ma Oli’ has also been doing the rounds on the video hosting site.

Over a week earlier, on November 2, CPN (Maoist Centre) had also released a rap song titled ‘Vote for Maobadi, Vote for Prachanda’. The song, as the name suggests, asks people to vote for the party and its chairman. On the Maoists’ official YouTube channel, the song has been viewed over 28,000 times. On Tuesday, the party also released a Nepal Bhasa version of the number.

These songs are only examples of the bevy of videos, posters, jingles, chants, narrations, testimonials, vox pops and other multimedia content political parties and leaders put out over the past month as part of their campaigns for Sunday’s federal and provincial elections. A majority of these were in Nepali and almost all of them were either released on or promoted through social media. 

And, according to members of various candidates’ campaigns, this is because social networking platforms offer wider reach at low cost and minimal effort.

“They allow candidates to reach out to a large number of people in a direct, efficient and cost-effective manner,” said Anusha Nepal, member of Gagan Thapa’s secretariat in his constituency of Kathmandu 4. Thapa, a candidate for the House of Representatives (HoR) from the Nepali Congress, is one of the more social media-active leaders of his party, making an average of five posts per day on his Facebook page.

“Facebook, in particular, offers an opportunity to engage with a large number of voters and both hear their voices and get our voice heard,” 

Nepal said.

The Rising Nepal talked to three other campaign representatives working with candidates of other political parties. While they declined to speak in an official capacity, fearing any unintentional violation of the Election Commission’s Code of Conduct, all three shared that they believed Facebook had become an important tool for election campaigns in Nepal.

Data published by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and a report by the Nepal Revenue Advisory Board published in June indicates that the platform has 12.30 million users in Nepal. “This represents a huge base that political personalities are realising must be interacted with,” said one of the representatives.

And this realisation seems to have driven an uptick in ‘Sponsored ads’ on the website. Sponsored ads are paid publications launched from a Facebook Page and shown to a targeted audience and, as per Meta’s Ad Library, there have been over 6,000 of them on the topics of “politics, elections or social issues” targeted to audiences in Nepal since the beginning of September.

Shree Ram Gurung, an independent candidate for the House of Representatives from Kathmandu Constituency 5, has been the top spender on such sponsored ads this election. 

The data recorded in the Ad Library shows that he has spent US$ 3,880 in paid advertising on Facebook since October 16. 

He is followed by Suresh Basnet, who is also standing for the House from Bhojpur 1 from the Nepalka Lagi Nepali Party. Basnet has spent US$ 2,307 in the same period.

Kiran Poudel, UML’s candidate from Kathmandu 1; Sushant Shrestha, an independent from Kathmandu 5 and Pradip Paudel, Congress’s candidate from Kathmandu 5, are also among the top five spenders. They have spent US$ 2,035, US$ 1,501 and US$ 1,266 in the campaigns for the HoR since October 16.

Likewise, the four campaign members this paper spoke to also said that TikTok was also emerging as a strong tool to connect with potential voters.

But this raises a question – how ethical is it to be advertising to Nepali citizens on foreign-owned social media companies using data they could have possibly collected without our full knowledge and explicit consent?

Well, we cannot definitively answer this question in the present context because, as Dr. Sudhamshu Dahal, an expert on new media and information and communication technology (ICT) and assistant professor at Kathmandu University School of Arts, said, “We do not have specific laws and mechanisms addressing online data protection and privacy.”

One thing is clear, though. As instruments for electoral canvassing and voter outreach, social media and digital media, in general, are here to stay.

However, while individual candidates have been quick to adapt to this change, political parties as institutions have not, he observed. “Parties seem to still prefer traditional methods of communication,” Dr. Dahal noted, speculating that it could be because of the limits on spending in foreign currency or because of the mindset of the top bosses.

“The Nepal Rastra Bank only allows entities to spend US$ 500 through their dollar cards which may restrict the parties’ ability to advertise online,” he explained. “Also, the older people making decisions in the major parties may not have adequately comprehended the significance of new media.” 

Physical campaigning still necessary

However, Nepal said that it was also because the voters preferred the old way. 

“Many over a certain age want to see the candidate in person,” she told The Rising Nepal. “No matter how aware they are of their parties’ policy or the nominee, they need to have the campaigners come to their doors before they decide to vote.”

What does the law say?

The Election Commission had allowed people standing for seats in the House of Representatives and provincial assemblies in Sunday’s elections to advertise on social media but with a strict caveat that they were to not advertise during the silent period.