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Polity, Governance and Current Affairs

AI-Enabled Political Mobilization

Identity-Based to Issue-Driven Politics, Gender Participation, AI-Enabled Mobilization

Paper III · Unit 1 Section 6 of 11 0 PYQs 27 min
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AI-Enabled Political Mobilization

5.1 Technologies Used in Modern Indian Elections

India's 2024 Lok Sabha elections were among the world's most technologically sophisticated electoral exercises. Key AI/technology deployments are outlined below.

Micro-Targeted Advertising

Political parties used voter data (Jan Dhan accounts, MGNREGS records, caste data from surveys) combined with social media profiles to create voter segments. Facebook/Meta and Google advertising platforms enable micro-targeting by age, location, interests, and inferred political affinity. BJP's IT cell and Congress's digital team ran thousands of simultaneously targeted ad campaigns.

AI-Generated Voice Calls

In 2024 UP and Rajasthan elections, AI-cloned voices of popular politicians were used for automated voter outreach calls. AI call centres made millions of personalised calls at a fraction of the cost of human operators. ECI noticed deepfake audio misuse and issued guidelines in 2024.

Deepfakes for Political Disinformation

  • AI-generated video and audio of politicians saying things they never said
  • In February 2024, deepfake audio of a Rajasthan BJP leader was circulated days before elections
  • Meta and Google announced deepfake content policies for Indian elections
  • ECI's IT Cell actively working to detect and remove deepfake political content

WhatsApp Political Micro-Targeting

India's 500+ million WhatsApp users receive political content through WhatsApp forwards and WhatsApp Groups managed by party IT cells. Content is often vernacular, visual (memes, images), and designed for sharing — bypassing mass media. Misinformation and communal content spread rapidly through closed groups.

Sentiment Analysis and Polling

Political parties use NLP (Natural Language Processing) tools to analyse social media sentiment by constituency, caste group, and issue. "War rooms" with real-time data feeds enable parties to respond quickly to emerging narratives. PRISM-like systems used by some campaign consultancies for predictive voter modelling.

5.2 Regulatory Response to AI in Elections

5.3 Social Media and Political Polarization

India's social media ecosystem has accelerated political polarisation through three main mechanisms.

Algorithmic polarisation: Social media algorithms optimise for engagement — which is driven by emotionally charged content. Political outrage, communal content, and anti-opposition messaging are highly engaging, leading to "echo chambers" where users see only views reinforcing their own.

IT cells and "troll armies": Both BJP and Congress (and other parties) maintain organised social media teams. Academic research has documented coordinated inauthentic behaviour — fake accounts, bot networks, and real people paid to amplify party messages and harass critics.

WhatsApp misinformation: Studies by TRAI Advisory Committee and Internet Freedom Foundation document that WhatsApp misinformation has contributed to mob violence (Palghar mob lynching 2020, multiple cases of mob violence triggered by fake child-kidnapper messages). ECI's 2018–2019 initiatives included WhatsApp grievance channels and a partnership with WhatsApp to detect bulk forwarding.