According to data shared exclusively by the social networking giant with ET, Modi's Facebook Page has more followers than Donald Trump and his official page -PMO India -ranks third followed by Modi page's personal page and the newly elected US president Trump. The data also shows that Digital India, Make in India and Swachh Bharat are the most engaged campaigns that have been run by the government.
“This is the new form of public go vernance,“ said Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, Fa cebook India, South & Central Asia. She added that econo mic themes occur ring in marque pro jects such as Digital India or Make in In dia -mostly related to jobs -are getting the maximum enga gement. “He is reinimportance of inter forcing the importance of internet platforms as an input factor, tool for better productivity, higher output creating brand recognition, and accessing global markets,“ said Das.
Talking about followers Modi has on Facebook, Das said that on the day election results were announced in May 2014, Modi had 14 million fans and the number on Friday stands at 41.9 million. “This is the rise and rise of the Prime Minister.“ Despite the fact that the government took some drastic and surprise measure over the last six months including demonitisation, Modi has added 4 million followers which means that “his approval ratings continues to be high his and it all validates what you are seeing in terms of the popularity and the (election) wins,“ added Das.
The data also shows that after Modi, in terms of interactions union ministers Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, General VK Singh, Piyush Goyal and Arun Jaitley are the most followed. The ministry of Information and Broadcasting, ministry of external affairs and ministry of railways are the top three in terms of interactions on the platform.
Das said that Facebook's government and politics teams are doing a lot of capacity building and training programme for government ministries and more than 6,000 government functionaries have been trained so far.
Das added that the platform is also being used in a big way by those in the position of power for reaching out to their target audience and for grievance redressal.
“Ministries have their pages where they are conducting Facebook Q&As, FB live etc, it is being used by citizens and all of these product variations is driving grievance redressal,“ said Das.
She added that while Modi is driving global digital diplomacy through the platform, all the ministry of external affairs missions are on Facebook.
In terms of data up until now Modi has led 603 million interactions in terms of likes, shares etc and the number of posts since May 2014 stands at 150 million. His video views have been more than 114.4 million.
Economic policies and global diplomacy apart, Modi's biggest hits on the Facebook, however has been his post about personal moments.One such as when his mother visited and the prime minister shared pictures of them touring the official residence which received 50,000 shares and a massive 1,50,000 likes.
“We are a very family centric society, it showed a personal side to the PM and it is important for leaders to show vulnerability and to show that they care,“ added Das.
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