Understanding the role of social media in political corporate branding research in the context of Indian politics

This paper seeks to explore how political actors within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) use social media in their communication campaigns and how these social media platforms are understood by citizens following the 2014 Indian General Election. This research attempts to address the limited understanding of social media in the context of politics (Barnard and Kreiss, 2013; Burton and Shea, 2010; Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez 2011; Ganz, 2009; Gulati and Williams, 2007; Kumar 2009; Owen and Davis 2008). Furthermore, the limited research on political branding and social media has predominantly focused a western context negating eastern perspectives including the republic of India. This study will use the adapted Kapferer’s (2008) brand identity prism developed by Pich et al. (2014) to a political setting. This framework will ground the study and offer the opportunity to examine the role of social media from an internal brand identity and external brand image perspective. The findings will have implications not only for political parties but also for politicians, candidates and other parties interested in social media. This study will offer organisations a mechanism that will allow them understand how their social media is projected and understood and allow them to investigate whether their projected brand identity is coherent with the understood external brand image