TRS grabs top seat in social media spotlight

Hyderabad: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, while BJP and Congress social media teams are waging battles on social media, the war in Telangana state has become one-sided.

While the TRS is actively promoting welfare schemes and initiatives taken up by government, the Facebook page of the Telangana Congress has no active content since the state elections on December 7.

Even the Twitter handle of the TPCC has been reposting content from the parent unit and not generating any new content. A member of the TRS social media team said, “Based on the kind of content being posted by INC Telangana, it will not be intensive for the Lok Sabha elections as it was for the assembly polls. The Congress has left the field open for us.”

While the TRS social media team is intact with little attrition, the Congress’ social media page is evidently lifeless. Both parties had hired campaign coordinators during the Assembly election campaign but have reportedly dismissed them since.

This is not the case with national politics where social media, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Youtube, are being flooded with content in the form of images, videos and texts as part of the electoral fight.

The BJP and the Congress are trolling each other by creating the most innovative memes and parody. This went to the extent that the BJP and the Congress have made their own rio-offs of the Azadi song from the upcoming movie Gully Boy.

Keeping in view the demographic dividend, the IT cells of the parties have well drafted tactics to spread their messages and counter their opponents on social media. This is certainly not the case at the state level

The TRS is going about with a three-pronged strategy when it comes to posts which focus on promoting the state as a role model, canvassing success stories apart from stories from Hyderabad.

#TrailblazerTelangana, #TriumphantTelangana and #HappeningHyderabad are the three major hashtags under which content is pushed on social media.

TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao has been using these hash tags. When other states emulate the schemes rolled out by the TRS government or the state does something unique,  #TrailblazerTelangana is used. Likewise, when Telangana achieves a milestone, success stories are shared using #TriumphantTelangana.