Cockroach Janta Party Overtakes BJP on Instagram
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a comedic social media campaign, became exceptionally popular on Instagram, gaining over 9.3 million followers within just four days of opening its official profile. The incredible growth of CJP has allowed them to surpass the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and create new conversations on what is trending in today’s news.
A Viral Political Satire Gains Massive Support
CJP began to trend on May 16th when young people began creating a comic relief social media movement. The media coverage surrounding CJP increased with mention of comments allegedly made by the Chief Justice of India Surya Kant during a court case that drew attention to the topic.
On May 17th, CJP started their Instagram account (@cockroachjantaparty) to capitalize on the spike in activity generated by the media coverage of Justice Surya Kant’s comments and their newfound popularity on X (formerly Twitter). In only three days, CJP’s Instagram page has gained over 3 million followers in approximately 78 hours and currently has over 9 million total followers as of May 20, 2021.
According to publicly available data on Instagram, CJP has overtaken the BJP (@bjp4india), which has approximately 8.7 million total followers.
The official accounts of both political parties’ respective organizations have vastly different follower counts; The Congress Party’s official Instagram account has over 11.2 million followers, while the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) account has about how they would consider themselves to be located 1.9 million followers.
What makes this achievement even more significant is that there is comparatively little content on each of the accounts. The Congress Party account contains only 56 posts, compared to more than 18,000 Instagram posts by the BJP since beginning to use the platform as a means of communication.
Focus on Issues important to the Youth
According to the organization, their movement is considered a “youth organization created by the youth and built for the youth”. The vast majority of the content shared on these pages is focused on issues important to young people, such as issues related to unemployment, exam paper leaks, issues of governance, and political accountability.
The campaign’s humorous voice, use of memes to create humor, and incisive commentary about pertinent issues affecting India’s digitally engaged youth demographic has enabled the account to develop a following among this population.
On the day it surpassed the BJP in total follower count, the account congratulated himself with a post that included the phrase: “Never underestimate the power of youth.” It also included a humorous post regarding the ruling party’s followers, including: “They say they are the biggest Party in the World!”
Spreading Outwards and Not Just Through Instagram
The popularity and appeal of the movement extend beyond just Instagram as evidenced by its x profile that has gained in excess of 165,000 followers in addition to continued interaction.
Furthermore, while the BJP is the largest political party on the planet in terms of total membership with over 140 million and is in power as a part of the National Democratic Alliance, led by PM, Narendra Modi; the emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party, which is a digital youth-driven initiative demonstrates how influential youth have become as part of creating social change through digital means.
With social media affecting the public dialogue on a regular basis, the rapid success of the Cockroach Janta Party campaign has become an extremely ‘followed’ story on many Trending News today platforms.
