After the recent political and civil unrest in the country, Imran Khan has come out of the sociopolitical trauma by moving toward digital politics. He created an account on TikTok, which went viral in no time, and his first video on TikTok has reached 133 million views. This is a huge number, as it’s almost 15 crores. Although he and his social media team have already influenced the people, creating an account on Tiktok is something out of the box for his political competitor.
Tiktok is a fast-growing digital platform in Pakistan that would help him mobilise and influence the people at the grassroots level in a sense of an educated community, as it is used by most of the people who have nothing to do except watch videos on Tiktok, and it will definitely influence them easily to get attracted towards his charisma, even if it is not the big charisma, but he has some personality traits that influence the parochial minds easily.
As he has been facing some political hurdles by the authorities, it is a good move by him at least. Digital Politics is a tool to get more political engagement, to have easy political communication, to influence more people towards certain ideologies, and to mobilize people more effectively and efficiently who do not or less use the traditional ways to be informed about politics.
Demos, a leading British research think tank, surveyed people, and 9 percent said they had changed their minds about a political issue that was important to them. A large majority (72 percent) of people who had used social media for political purposes reported that they felt more politically engaged, in one way or another, as a direct result. 15 percent of Social media users said that social media was the only way that they engaged with politics over the last year; around 1 in 5 (21 percent) who claim to have no interest in politics had still Sent messages with political content on social media. Carl Miller (2016), The Rise of Digital Politics.
This clearly indicates that digital politics has been an effective way of political communication, engagement, campaigns, and mobilization, which helps the politicians who use digital platforms to influence. There have been some examples in the past where politicians and leaders successfully used digital platforms to influence and mobilize the people.
Barack Obama and his team used digital platforms for his campaign to get people’s support and donations. He got marvelous results through the email programme and Www.my.barackobama.com using MyBO.
And even Donald Trump was so busy in his campaigns through Twitter to influence the social media audience. CNN senior political analyst Kirsten said: “Without Twitter, there would be no Donald Trump presidency.”
Although his social media accounts have been blocked lately.
Comparatively, due to different political hemispheres and situations, Imran Khan may not be as successful as they were or as he was before becoming Prime Minister. Moreover, because of Political and economic instability, it is not yet clear who would be successful, but as it is said by Plouffe, “Technology has always been used as a net to capture people in a campaign or cause, but not to organize.” He may get more attention through digital politics, especially by using Tiktok as a tool of mobilization, but the past and recent events may not prove fruitful in a country like Pakistan.
