Social Media Strategies and Political Communication of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

The growth and development of social media has changed the way that politics is communicated, giving organizations the ability to engage with big and diverse audiences through interactive online channels. The paper analyses how social media is being used by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the 21st century for political outreach and focuses on selected social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X. The research examines the process of digital communication in terms of being 'visible', 'narrated', 'circulated', 'engaged' and 'mobilised', and as 'networked' in the organisational sense.The study focuses on digital communication as a process of being 'visible', 'narrated', 'circulated', 'engaged' and 'mobilised', as well as upon ‘networked' in the sense of organised. It is a qualitative and analytical approach with the use of documents and secondary literature from the organisation. This focus on visibility and narrative circulation is not only a focus of digital-politics scholarship, but indicates a larger trend in digital-politics scholarship: online platforms are not only vehicles for transmitting messages, but influence how audiences experience, interpret and re-share political information. In recent years, the study of Hindu nationalism and digital media (2020–2026) has demonstrated how fast right-wing groups have quickly embraced the logics of platforms such as short-form video, memes and influencer networks that have helped to normalise ideological frames. Therefore, this paper adopts a lens of hybrid media system and considers RSS social media as not just a broadcasting medium, but one that is co-constructed by official posts, volunteer shares and sympathetic creators that collectively amplify narratives. The emphasis is on the communication process, on what is put up, on how it is 'packaged', how audiences are engaged. It is not about any specific claim of impact on the electoral outcome which may not have been verified. This is in line with recent research calls for examining the adaptation of organisations to digital affordances without blending visibility and persuasion. More recently, in 2024 and 2025, researchers have documented the way that Indian political actors make use of the platform-specific features (reels, stories, threads) for micro-targeting audiences, further highlighting the need for a content strategy and networked amplification level of analysis for outreach.