Unicaus NEWS
The Delhi police clip — one of several humorous spin-offs of popular memes and viral videos — is part of the force’s growing effort to employ wit and pop culture to spread awareness among youth. How successful the law enforcement agency has been in reshaping public messaging in the age of social media can be gauged from the response to this particular post. At the time of going to press, it had been liked over 10 lakh times, shared more than three lakh times, and garnered thousands of comments praising its creativity. Or one could consider how the force has increased its online visibility over the past few years.
“When I first joined the team, I did not even know how to make an account on Instagram. But we have worked on improving our tech literacy,” said Inspector Ravi Kant, who heads their social media team, which comprises eight personnel and staff of a private firm that works with the police in generating graphics and analytics.
He added, “Over the past three years, we observed a 50% growth on X, which now has over ten lakh followers, around 35% growth on Instagram with over five lakh followers and nearly 20% growth on YouTube, where we now have 35,000 subscribers. Our presence online continues to grow.”
Delhi Police now has a total of 15 lakh followers across various social media platforms.
In sync with times
One of @delhi.police_official’s posts asks viewers to read the message underneath from a different angle. Upon doing so, the illegible-seeming text turns out to be — ‘Don’t share OTP’. The police have put out many such posts to promote cybersecurity awareness.
“Humour is something we have to use invariably, as no one likes a moral lecture,” said Mr. Kant. When asked about the precautions they take before making posts, he said, “We ensure that there is no ambiguity in the message we want to deliver. It has to be said with clarity and dignity.”
The team develops a year-round plan to ensure posts are timed with significant dates and the various festivals. “For instance, in January, in view of Republic Day, we are more focused on pushing messages related to our security drives. In February, we will promote posts on sextortion and related crimes around Valentine’s Day,” he said. For the current month of festivities, the force is working on online campaigns against drunken driving.
Off the cuff
Aside from the posts planned well in advance, the team also tries to mould their campaign around trending Bollywood movies and OTT shows. One such instance was from last year. A video clip of Rohit Sharma, then captain of India’s men’s Test team, telling fielder Sarfaraz Khan, standing dangerously close to the batsman, “Hero nahi banne ka (Don’t try to be a hero)”, had gone viral. The police launched a helmet-safety campaign around the meme. “One of the team members came up with this idea while watching the match and put out the post by midnight,” Mr. Kant said.
Constable Ashish, one of the eight team members, recalled how he came up with an idea for a post that later went viral: “It was around the New Year. Parties were being thrown everywhere. I came up with this idea of posting an invitation from the police.” The post read: ‘Delhi Police invites all hooligans for a Cell Block party, with Breathanalyser as the opening performer, followed by DJ Bukcle Up and DJ Safety First.’ It was liked and shared lakhs of times.
Meaningful awareness
Pujneet Singh, a social media content creator who has been following Delhi Police’s posts, said, “I absolutely love how they keep up with Instagram trends while spreading meaningful awareness. For example, the way they used Akshaye Khanna’s viral entry is creative, impactful and perfectly executed,” he said, referring to the Bollywood actor’s performance in a song from the recently released film Dhurandhar.
A social media expert from the private firm that works closely with the police said, “When it comes to graphics, everything pertaining to colour, text and captions is carefully curated. We use lighter tones and shorter captions more often.”
“We make sure that we don’t go overboard on humour and lose focus on the message we’re trying to convey. Virality is by chance. The message is more important. After all, it’s not a meme page,” she added.
Platform literacy
Sandeep Sharma, a senior media analyst, said, “Their work shows comprehensive platform literacy. I feel humour in their posts functions primarily as an attention and recall mechanism rather than as pure entertainment.”
He added, “Meme-based and humour-driven posts have significantly outperformed traditional informational posts in reach, impressions and interaction. Comment sentiment on such posts has been overwhelmingly positive, indicating genuine audience approval rather than superficial engagement. Trolls often try to distract, but such attempts don’t have much impact.”
