Social media and policy making in India: A co...

Social media and policy making in India: A conceptual analysis of their role and impact in contemporary scenario

Author Name : Sandip Kumar Bal, Dr. Netajee Abhinandan

ABSTRACT

In the last century, human communication has gone a sea change. With the arrival of new century, social media brought a paradigm shift to social communication. What started as a mean of connecting among friends, became a platform for marketing and large-scale public communication. With adoption of more innovations and growing potential, social media have become a tool for political communication and an alternative for traditional media. Besides, governments have been tapping social media to reach out to citizens for better governance and inclusive policy making, which have been presumably leading to citizen-centric governance that areperceived to be more effective, efficient and transparent.

India also took a giant leap towards making governance more citizen centric and participatory in the last decade. With Narendra Modi becoming Prime Minister and his experience of using social media successfully in political and governance communications, India took the convergence of social media in policy making much seriously. Now, India has become a huge market for international social media firms. Besides, of late, several home-grown social media companies have emerged to tap the large market and provide better service to Indians. This study tries to give a conceptual idea of social media with focus on its role and impact in India. At the same time the study finds out various aspects of policy making highlighting the processes involved in India and role of common people. More importantly, it’s an attempt to go through various literatures available to establish a link between the rise of social media and its impact on policy making in terms of people’s participation and better governance in India.

(Keywords: social media, policy making, policy process, people’s participation, governance)