Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had chosen former Lok Sabha MP and actress Ramya aka Divya Spandana to head the social media team of the party in May this year.
Rahul Gandhi beats PM Modi, Kejriwal on retweets; to change Twitter handle soon?
Since taking over the job from Rohtak's Lok Sabha MP Deepender Hooda, who handled the social media team of Congress for five years, Ramya has through her shown quite tangible results.
Rahul's social media activity has changed drastically over the past few months. Rahul's tweets, which are often aimed at the BJP and the central government, are now streaked with a daily dose of sarcasm and humour.
Who is Ramya?
This actress-turned-politician has predominantly acted in Kannada films and has also appeared in Tamil and Telugu films.
Ramya joined Congress in 2012 and won the Lok Sabha polls from Mandya constituency in 2013 but lost the seat in the 2014 general election.
It is due to the contribution of this 34-year-old Social Media and Digital Communications head of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) that Rahul gets more retweets than Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In fact, an analysis of Rahul's and Modi's account has shown that till October 15, each of Rahul Gandhi's Twitter posts was retweeted an average of 3,800 times, while Modi's has fallen to around 2,300.
Ramya, who has around 4,83,000 followers, has said that she has gained a lot ever since she took up the position.
"Social media is a very interesting space. I must admit when I initially took over I knew very little about it. Over the last few months, I've learnt a lot and I'm still learning. The digital space is like politics. You can never fully understand it and that is something I find very interesting because it keeps changing and throwing up new and fascinating dynamics," Ramya was quoted as saying by DNA.
What is Ramya's agenda?
Though Ramya did not mention Modi's name, she said that ever since she became the social media head of Congress, her agenda is to try to "bring in the other perspectives by getting more diverse voices online", as the media platform is "dominated by one voice".
"Controlling the narrative is not our agenda. Our agenda is to bring in balance where people can converse, engage with one another and contribute to the idea of India. A lot can happen over social media," Ramya told DNA.
How has Congress' social media stand changed?
Ramya has said that Rahul's old speeches and his views on Modi's initiatives are now being viewed in a different light by the social media users.
"People earlier were not ready to listen to Mr Gandhi but now they are willing to listen to him and many are saying that he said the right thing. His older speeches on MSP, GST, demonetisation, jobs; are doing well today. Earlier, they wouldn't get traction but today the response to them is on an altogether different scale," Ramya said.
"His Berkeley speech was watched live on our website by 57,000 people at 7 am," she added.
