On March 14, identically dressed two little boys from Sathipattu near Panruti in Cuddalore district, walked past the huge iron gates at Fort St George, climbed up the stairs to reach near the tightly guarded corridors of power inside the state secretariat. Deva and Jiva, the two child influencers, knocked the doors of chief minister M.K. Stalin’s chamber, shot a reel with him and soon it went viral.
“Do you know why I gave the audience to you?” Stalin asked the two boys. When the boys replied, “to encourage us,” Stalin was quick to reply saying, “you both are also urging everyone to study as I do.” Instagram handle @talk_with_deva with 1.1 million followers is run by brothers Deva and Jiva, studying in class 5 and class 2, respectively. Their reel now has crossed more than two million views and the reach became wide as many handles shared the political content made by Deva and Jiva. “We met the chief minister because we wanted to tell everyone that education is more important in life to be successful,” Deva told THE WEEK over the phone from Cuddalore. The two boys who were making reels with the local available content using their uncle’s Android phone for the first time made a political pitch, which has turned into a campaign video for the ruling DMK.
Deva and Jiva pulling off a political reel with Stalin has given their page more visibility. But more than that their reel had extolled the virtues of the “Dravidian Model government” of the DMK. “It was our pleasure to meet CM. He is the role model for those who want to be successful in life,” says Deva, the elder brother.
For decades, the pulse of Tamil Nadu politics was measured in the decibels of a loudspeaker and the literal dust kicked up by massive ground rallies. These physical displays of strength were the primary barometer for political survival. Political party anthems like “Oodi varugiran udhayasooriyan”; “kallakudi kanda Karunanidhi” in Nagoor Hanifa’s voice in the DMK public meetings or the popular MGR number from Ulagam sutrum valiban “Namadhu vetriyai naalaiya sarithiram sollum” that turned out be AIADMK prophetic have always travelled across the state through the high decibel speakers fitted on the vans and can be heard played before the beginning of any public meeting. But now social media influencers like Deva and Jiva are part of the emerging new trend that could replace the high decibel speakers fitted on campaign vans and public rallies to a relentless scroll that can help swing the voting trend. While elections are still technically won on the ground, the battle for the mind has migrated entirely to short-form video. The strategy consultant teams working for the political parties in the state no longer view digital as a supplementary wing. It is the central nervous system of a modern campaign, devised with well crafted taglines and strong messages in just one minute.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), a not-for-profit body representing the digital services sector, says that India has over 958 million Active Internet Users (AIUs). And of these internet users 548 million are in rural India. But most of the active internet users, according to IAMAI consume short video content which is the key growth driver of the expanding social media usage. Internet in India report 2025 says that at least 61 per cent, that is 588 million people in India consume only short video content. If these are the all India figures, Tamil Nadu, as early as 2026, has over 63.48 million internet users with a significant and fast-growing social media user base. As per a survey by one of the political party strategy teams, over 64 per cent of the internet users in Tamil Nadu depend on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for quick news updates and civic engagement.
Thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who first set the trend in 2014, during the 16th Lok Sabha election. Though the internet and social media played a huge role in the previous elections too, this time the state is actually witnessing an evolution of digital tools and platforms. The medium of political communication has transitioned through several distinct phases since the digital surge began in 2014. If 2014 to 2019 was the Facebook era, where the digital community mobilisation happened, next was the Twitter era in 2021. In the 2021 election the focus shifted to hashtag wars and trending topics. In fact, DMK’s GoBackModi was the most popular hashtag then. The success of the hashtag was measured by the ability to keep a specific narrative at the top of national or regional trends.
But 2026 is the era of Reels and Shorts. While Twitter seems to have lost its primary influence, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts influence the voters to a large extent. The political war rooms which were obsessed with Twitter hashtags, fighting coordinated battles to trend for a few hours do not use that play book anymore. The strategists have largely abandoned Twitter to the media elites and the high-status echo chambers. “No one is looking into Twitter trending,” observes Niranjan, a digital and poll strategist who works for a few legislators from the mainstream parties in Tamil Nadu. The voting public these days trust the Shorts and Reels feeds. The campaign has transitioned from text-heavy discourse to high-speed visual storytelling, pivoting from the elite to the everyone on the ground. Not just the reels and shorts, WhatsApp videos also play a larger role in influencing the voters,” points out Niranjan.
More than the newspaper advertisements, the public rallies and the high-decibel speakers fitted on the vans, these platforms reach a vastly wider, non-political demographic through 60-second bursts of music and imagery. The attention is short-form vertical video that bypasses the intellectual filters of traditional political discourse.
For instance Chennai-based nano influencer @sammjilifestyle aka M Manoj Samuel had built his social media page with reels on food, new store launches and tourist spots in the city. But in the recent days, Samuel has been posting reels on the chief minister’s morning breakfast scheme and the free bus ride for women with a soft political pitch. “I am not being paid for all this. I do it on my own interest,” says Samuel. But his reels have created the required impact.
Yet another page in the name of R. Vasanth with over 1.8 lakh followers now has reels with the DMK’s new 2026 election campaign anthem, “Stalin thodarattum. TamilNadu vellattum.” Vasanth known for his interviews with reality TV contestants from Big Boss is a popular face in Instagram with the present day youth followers. “Social media is a medium of campaign. It takes the message across to the people, keeps repeating it till the formal campaigning begins on the ground,” says Gowtham Ravichandran who has worked in political party war rooms and now runs a digital marketing company.
Days before when Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) leader Vijay reached Thanjavur to campaign for his party, the crowd gathered there were in no mood to listen to him. Many were searching for a perched location - to stand with their hands stretched and phone screens up. “I got a selfie with Vijay. I will post it as a reel in my Insta page,” says 26-year old R. Deepika who had just opened an Insta account. “My friend became popular in my locality after she started posting videos and reels of Vijay. I am also trying it,” says Deepika, who works in a textile showroom as a sales girl near Orathanadu in Thanjavur district.
According to a study by the Canadian journal of philosophy in 2021 hyper-nudging and micro-targeting polarise electorates and undermine the democratic debate. The social media algorithms constantly update recommendations based on user behaviour, nudging them toward specific viewpoints. The tailored AI-driven ads reinforce biases among the voters. “This is called micro targeting. It may not make the voter vote for a particular party. But it will influence the voter to a certain extent, making him rethink,” says Gowtham.
The influencer industry has matured into a tiered marketplace where every like has a specific price point. The war room strategists say that there is a staggering 1:100 spending ratio between the dominant machinery and the opposition. While the ADMK might spend a few lakhs on influencers, the DMK and TVK’s budgets operate in the Rs 5-20 crore range. In fact in the recent months, TVK had almost overtaken the DMK with the content for Vijay and against Stalin.
The financial planning for the influencers is intense, with some metrics suggesting a cost of Rs 1.5 crore that is spent for one video in high-volume environments. The influencer market, this election season, is structured with two types of influences – like the nano and micro influencers who are hyperlocal voices with less than 100k followers who are deployed for Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 to cover local events. And then there are the big influencers and celebrities with social media accounts having over one million followers. These influencers include food bloggers and social commentators who get paid around Rs 5 to 6 lakh per one-minute video.
The AIADMK often produces A-roll content that is stylistically superior and humanises their leadership. However, they fail at the last mile of digital delivery. In contrast, the DMK has a central command model. The content isn't just released in the DMK. It is deployed through a rigid command chain. The core of this is a WhatsApp channel with over 46,000 followers, who aren't just random fans—but the IT wing members of the party. When a video is dropped, these officers are mandated to push it through their personal Instagram Stories and local village-level WhatsApp groups. This ensures that a single piece of content moves from the war room to a farmer’s phone in minutes, bypassing organic discovery entirely.
“The tech giants no longer treat political parties like standard advertisers. We are seeing a customer care model where Meta and Google provide dedicated representatives to parties with massive spends. Inside the war rooms, this is essentially a concierge service for political elites,” Niranjan points out. While these digital campaigns require significant investment, the spending is not only on advertising. It includes data analytics, technology platforms, research teams, content production, digital monitoring, and strategic communication infrastructure. Compared to traditional campaign spending, digital campaigns offer the advantage of precision targeting and real-time feedback.
Serious campaigns treat digital content like a strategic communication architecture, not just social media posts. It typically involves layered planning - message calibration, audience segmentation, data-driven targeting, rapid response teams, and narrative monitoring. The best digital war rooms combine data analytics, political intelligence, and storytelling to ensure that the campaign’s message travels consistently across platforms while adapting to different audiences.
For instance PEN (Populous Empowerment Network), the strategy team which manages the DMK’s digital machinery, helps the party optimise its reach and navigate algorithmic shifts in real-time, treating the political party like a high net worth banking client. This creates a massive structural disparity while smaller parties struggle with automated support, the major spenders have a direct line to the platform’s engineers to ensure their narrative stays dominant.
While DMK and the AIADMK have traditional dedicated IT wings, the fledgling TVK’s IT wing has emerged much stronger with its strategy team called Voice of Commons. TVK’s IT wing doesn’t depend on the old, traditional vote bank playbook. It only depends on the new reels and shorts. In fact in one of his campaign rallies, Vijay himself called a reel by a boy asking his parents at home to vote for TVK, as “cute.”
But the danger of a purely inorganic or paid campaign is the inevitable clash with reality. One of DMK’s rallies which boasted itself as “well organised” was immediately dismantled on the internet by Vijay’s “virtual warriors” by posting photos of empty chairs. This exposure often turns the influencers into sellouts in the eyes of their own followers, highlighting the authenticity trap. The surge of organic support for TVK these days is so potent that the DMK had to create a specific counter team dedicated solely to neutralising TVK on social media. When a crowd is truly organic on the internet even a multi-million dollar comment army struggles to control the narrative. “Creating favourable content is one thing. But finding the right distribution channels is another. Having a solid and uncompromising organic support base that is structured and organised is what makes the change,” says Gautham P.S., founder of Demos project Pvt Ltd, a political strategy company.
More than the digital ads, shorts and reels are the bots which create the illusion of trending political messaging. In the past six months the political parties in Tamil Nadu - be it the DMK, AIADMK, Seeman’s Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) and Vijay’s TVK have spent several crores on bots to tweak algorithms and shape the political discourse in their favour. But in this area too there are different mechanisms that each political party in Tamil Nadu uses.
“The DMK is a political force rooted in the rationalist ideals of Periyar and the scientific temper that defined the Dravidian movement. Science has always guided our social reform, governance model and political thinking. We approach AI with the same spirit. We are actively integrating AI into our party’s work, and it has proven beneficial. It helps us craft digital content swiftly, analyse feedback and data, automate routine tasks, enhance creativity, manage translation and gather information,” says T.R.B. Rajaa, industries minister and DMK’s IT wing secretary.
Despite the sophisticated algorithms, the only mantra that keeps the mainstream parties in Tamil Nadu going is 90 per cent on the ground and only 10 per cent on the digital space. Of course real politics cannot happen behind a camera lens and the digital content has to be packaged with ground reality and digital slice. “Ground organisation still decides the final vote, but digital war rooms increasingly shape the narrative environment in which voters interpret events. What happens online today influences what conversations happen in tea shops, barber shops, WhatsApp groups, and local communities tomorrow. The smart campaigns understand that digital is not a replacement for ground politics, it is a force multiplier for it,” says Aspire K. Swaminathan who worked for the AIADMK IT wing and has now authored a book on the functioning of the political party war rooms.
In the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, the winner may be the one who manages the tension between paid surrogate armies and the unpredictable power of organic madness on the internet. Influencers can influence attention, but not always votes. They can amplify narratives, shape perceptions, or trigger discussions, especially among younger audiences. But voting behaviour is still influenced by a complex mix of local leadership, credibility, community networks, and governance perception. In most cases, influencers are more effective at reinforcing existing political sentiment rather than completely converting voters.