Social Media Influence Pales Before The Intrusive Portrayal By TV Channels

The recent resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as union education minister at the persistent insistence of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protestors was attributed to the groundswell reflected in its 2 million members buttressed by 10 million followers on Instagram. The power of social media is undeniably immense but often exaggerated. Online patronage is passive and aligns with the herd mentality magnified by the multiplier effect of social media posts and their geometrical progression. You post a one-liner, and if you have 100 friends on the same social media platform, it quickly transforms into 100 eyeballs and more, depending on the followers each one of those hundred followers has. A laconic ‘like’ tick doesn’t mean the liker really liked your post, which he often does mechanically without bothering to read the content. It is more of a me-too statement made offhandedly with a sense of belongingness. Contrast it with the power of the television news channels.

Television news channels have an intrusive and 12-hour presence in the middle-class drawing rooms, hotels, bars, and airport lounges. They are obsessed with emotional and riveting news doing the rounds, be it Trump pounding Iran or Rahul Gandhi threatening to jolt the Modi government with a hydrogen bomb. A boy trapped in a well hogs headlines for hours and days together until he is extricated by the fire service and other brave hearts. Rahul Gandhi being dragged by the police to the bus outside 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, the residence of Prime Minister Modi, becomes a defining feature of primetime on TV. So much so, a popular anchor of a leading Hindi news channel was seen exhorting her camera team to drop everything and focus exclusively on blow-by-blow how he was being dragged. News channels can multiply each one of the eyeballs it begets by a factor of five, given the average of five persons glued to a TV at a given point in time. Television viewers, often rubbished as couch potatoes, are perceived by TV channels as a ready audience for all the street and voyeuristic happenings. TV channels are not coy about the pandering and polarising roles they play.

Arvind Kejriwal’s meteoric rise in politics was attributed to the saturation coverage his IAC movement, led by Anna Hazare, received from the television news channels. His latter-day clone, Abhijit Dipke, the founder of CJP, first latched onto the loose description of protestors as cockroaches by the Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kanth, and then basked in the television media attention he received from ground zero. If Delhi happens to be ground zero, it is all the better because most of the Hindi and English news channels are headquartered in the National Capital Region (NCR). For television channels, happenings around their headquarters are easier and cheaper to focus on. Two years ago, the massive tremors in Myanmar received much less television coverage than the simultaneous mild tremors witnessed in the neighbouring Bangkok. The reason is that foreign news channels have a dominant presence in Thailand, whereas they have an almost negligible presence in Myanmar. News channels, broadcasting 24x7, lap up the juiciest of news, especially if ground zero is in the vicinity.

Social media posts, on the other hand, have a word-of-mouth effect. They may have a multiplier effect, but are they as dramatic and persuasive as the TV channels’ carpet-bombing? The answer is ‘no’. TV channels hold viewers by the scruffs of their necks, especially if the accompanying visuals are horrific, like the police beating up students or lumpen elements breaking the heads of policemen. Instagram reels are just teasers vis-à-vis news channels’ unending and full-blown coverage of the dramatic events. Come to think of it, the Narendra Modi government wouldn’t have thrown in the towel and sought the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan had the CJP and the Congress led by Rahul Gandhi not brought the protests to the doors of the Prime Minister’s residence, practically and figuratively. In contrast, the protracted Jharkhand protests over the same issue might, for all one knows, fizzle out should the state government stand its ground resolutely, more so because the protest is not getting sustained TV coverage.

Social media participation calls for a semblance of literacy, maybe computer literacy and net savviness, but television viewing is as much for the highbrow intellectuals as for the downright unlettered, thanks to its powerful and captivating visuals, which make its reach far wider and deeper. Print media caters solely to the lettered, which is perhaps why newspapers are read mostly at airport lounges and hotel receptions these days. And at any rate, it lags pitifully behind TV channels. India has nearly 400 permitted satellite TV news and current affairs channels registered with the ministry of information and broadcasting, testifying to the race for one-upmanship, but only the fittest survive in the rat race. TV channels see merit in having their own online newspapers, which have, once again, ruffled the dovecotes of traditional printed newspapers flung into middle-class balconies at dawn every day.

Yes, social media is more here and now than TV channels, but the latter have the advantage of breaking the news to a much larger audience more dramatically and picturesquely and producing additional related visual material in double-quick time. The more resourceful among them call domain experts and party spokespersons at a very short notice to make a heady cocktail of infotainment.

S Murlidharan is a freelance columnist and writes on economics, business, legal and taxation issues.

Published on: Sunday, August 16, 2026, 09:09 PM IST