Surrogate Advertising in the 2019 and 2024 Indian General Elections: A Van Dijk’s Discourse Analysis of Selected Songs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58966/JCM2026523Keywords:
Surrogate Advertising, Political Campaigns, Indian Elections, Social Media, Digital Media, General Election 2019, General Election 2024Abstract
The dawn of the 21st century transformed the political landscape that witnessed two phenomena—an increase in poll expenses on account of a rise in focus on publicity and the beginning of surrogate campaigns, which is an attempt to indirectly propagate information without explicitly disclosing its political affiliation.
India has witnessed surrogate advertising in several election campaigns in the past six years, including in the General Elections 2019 and 2024. Several media forms were used for surrogate advertising in recent years. But for the purpose of study, Teun A Van Dijk Discourse Model is utilised to critically analyse the discourse propagated by the select surrogate songs. The study purposively selected two songs each from 2019 and 2024 General Elections from YouTube based on selection criteria and then are analysed following an analytical framework based on Van Dijk’s Discourse Model.
The study found that several genres like devotional, folk, rap were used either for personal glorification, re-branding or counter messaging making songs functions as constructing individual leader identity, lodging protest and seeking accountability. The analysis further reveals that songs function as powerful surrogate tools for political advertising in Indian elections by embedding ideological messages in their text and visuals. These findings demonstrate that musical content circulated through digital platforms i.e., YouTube operates as an indirect yet influential mechanism of political persuasion.
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