Journal of Power, Politics & Governance

Social Media and Odisha Politics: An Overview
Susanta Kumar Parida, Anuradha Das

Abstract
Social media offers innovative opportunities for political actors, political institutions and the public to interact with one another. Most of the prominent political parties are getting attracted toward the use of social media for their election campaigns. Most of the prominent political parties are getting attracted toward the use of social media for their election campaigns. The use of social media by politicians for wooing the younger generation continues. In Odisha, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik who has asked his party men to use social media to woo young voters, who constitute above 40 percent of the total electorate in the state, In an attempt to cash on the popularity of social media among the youths, the Odisha unit of Congress logged into social media by inaugurating social media unit ahead of 2014 Assembly election in Bhubaneswar. In Odisha, many MPs and MLAs have created accounts on popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Orkut. The content posted on these sites may relate to policy issues and the official work of politicians or to aspects of their personal lives. We have also seen some candidates also campaign through the popular social network sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. in recent Urban Local Body (ULB) elections. However social media will become a an important platform for electoral campaign in future elections. No doubt Social media will a game changing platform in near future.

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