Wired, but do they vote?
Whether Khan can translate online support into victory at the ballot box is highly contested. (When new elections will actually be held hasn't been decided although many expect them to be held in spring or summer 2013.)
"Imran Khan's base, his core support, is urban, middle class and educated -- precisely the cohort that has access to the Internet and spends time online," Cyril Almeida, who pens one of Pakistan's most-read columns for
Dawn newspaper, told NBC News. "Hence, his substantial online support. ... PTI is building a voter base starting from the social media."
Almeida acknowledges that former President Pervez Musharraf -- who led the country from 2001 to 2008 and now lives in exile in London -- also has a substantial online following but "wouldn't win a local councilor seat if he stood for one."
"Imran is somewhere in between," Almeida said. "His rock star status online is wildly more exaggerated than his real-world support -- though he will win at least some seats come election time."
Others, like Fahd Hussain, a primetime anchor
at Waqt TV, which belongs to one of Pakistan's oldest and most conservatively aligned news conglomerates, says the Internet could still generate a Khan "tsunami."
"[The] social media support base of Imran should not be ignored," Hussain said. "It's massive and growing and creates political momentum."
Others question what online popularity will translate into, if anything.
Gibran Peshimam, the political editor of the
Express Tribune newspaper, says that while Khan may be a heavyweight on the Internet, he is more of a lightweight offline.
"The percentage of Pakistan's population that has access to the Internet barely breaks the double-digit barrier," he told NBC News. "In any case, the majority percentage of those who have this access to the Internet, and hence social media, is a non-voting sector. The well-to-do generally do not vote in Pakistan. They talk about voting, but barely any of them are even registered to vote."
"Large-scale support on the Internet in Pakistan does translate into numbers, given the youth bulge, but it certainly does not translate into large numbers -- unlike, perhaps, in the U.S.," he added.
Dr Awab Alvi is Imran Khan's social media guru. A part-time politico, Alvi is an Ivy-League trained orthodontist by day, and the brains behind the powerful outfit that is Khan's social media machine by night.
Echoes of Obama '08?
The comparison to the United States is a common one in Pakistan, and linked to the Khan camp's obsession with President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign in which social media played a key role in fundraising as well as getting younger Americans out to vote. So-called Khanophiles constantly point to the Obama '08 template as one that can be replicated, with some qualifications and modifications, in the Islamic Republic.
Two such Khanophiles are Awab Alvi and Faisal Javed.
Alvi is a tall, soft-spoken and self-declared geek who signs his emails as BDS, MSc & TED Senior Fellow.
Although Alvi, is a University of Pennsylvania-trained orthodontist who says he does not hold any office in the burgeoning PTI, the 36-year-old's non-stop Twitter feed gives him away as Khan's constantly-connected social media wizard. His user ID,
Teeth Maestro, one of the best known in Pakistani cyberspace, hints at both his full-time hospital job in Karachi and his part-time political potency.
His blogs generate as much revenue as a successful small business, and the official site of the PTI that he helps administer often crashes because of the high traffic his online events generate. Alvi says the PTI has a 25-strong social media team featuring "volunteers scattered all over the globe."
Faisal Javed, 31, is a telecom executive by day and a PTI deputy secretary by political leaning. He spends Monday to Friday at the chic Islamabad headquarters of Telenor, leading the Scandinavian cellular giant's advertisement buying and content strategy for Pakistan.
But his evenings and weekends are reserved for the PTI. Javed, who opens rallies for Khan, is known nationally as Khan's "stage secretary," introducing him to crowds across the country. His easy confidence and broadcaster's voice make him one of the more prominent young faces of Khan's media-savvy corps.
Behind the scenes at
Khan's first Google+ Hangout, the zeal to replicate Obama's PR accomplishments was obvious. As soon as Khan rolled in (along with a small army of assistants, advisers and bodyguards), Alvi and his team adopted a very American, no-nonsense mood that is not typical of Pakistani culture.
They kicked out all people dubbed "non-essentials" and started what seemed like a haphazard pre-battle briefing.
"How many people are watching me?" Khan asked.
"Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions might be watching," said Alvi and his lieutenants speaking over each other.
Khan: "What does this mean, 'Google Hangout'?"
Alvi/his geeks: "People submitted questions, and then voted in the most questions. In three days, 15,000 questions were submitted and 13,000 questions were crowd-sourced via (text messages)."
Khan: "Is this live?"
Alvi/his geeks: "Yes! Obama has done it too! Ten people from all over the country and the world will interact with you. The questions and questioners have been chosen. All you have to do is answer them."
The audio wouldn't connect for 20 minutes after the Hangout was scheduled, and even as the event went online, some anchors on Pakistan's infamous conspiracy-theory driven national television denounced the event as a "drama" which was "staged" and "not live," much to Alvi and his team's chagrin.
A small Twitter/Facebook skirmish between the Khan camp and his detractors later ensued, where both sides argued over the "reality" of the Hangout. The skirmish lasted about a week.
But overall the Hangout event went pretty much as planned. Khan waxed eloquent about the economy, militancy, America, education and Pakistan's several other existential crises. He promised to raze the walls of governors' mansions, pledged to make them public libraries and explained progressive taxation to a female college student.
In what was perhaps the most important sign of success, the event caused #HangoutwithIK to trend on Twitter. But what really made political history in Pakistan was that the national conversation of the country was fully online and not broadcast on television and radio for the first time.
Later, Javed unwound with a Marlboro.
"You know why he did it? You know how he handled all those questions? Because he's neat and clean and has nothing to hide," he said.
What of the rural heartland?
Still, even if Khan's PTI wins seats in parliament on the back of his social-media campaign, he is still a long way from power, some analysts say.
"The next step, to premiership, goes through the dusty, deceitful and a whole-lot-less-plugged-in territory of Pakistan's rural heartland," political editor Peshimam says.
Most of Pakistan's civilian power players have traditionally relied on the country's teeming rural areas for their support-bases.
Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, which leads the current coalition government, is entrenched in rural Sindh -- the country's second-most populous province. Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N-???) has always relied on, and thus come to dominate, the lush swathes of central and northern Punjab.
While Khan is pushing hard to topple the de facto but unofficial two-party system by becoming a third force via social media, Pakistan remains a poor and rural-majority country where just 20 million of its 180-million people are connected to the Internet.
"Several polls show that as a leader Imran Khan is very popular," says Raza Rumi, director of policy and programs at
Islamabad-based think tank The Jinnah Institute. "(But) there are methodological problems with such surveys and often their urban bias has also been called into question.
"Khan will emerge as a political player in the next parliament but it would be premature to say what would be the strength of his party," Rumi added. "His huge presence on social media is linked to a substantial following, especially in the young segment of population. There is a strong relationship here.
But to assume that Facebook or Twitter rankings will result in electoral gains across Pakistan would be wrong."
But Khanophiles like Javed, the telecom executive, aren't discouraged by such such sober assessments.
"We can't ignore this medium. There are two million of us [supporting PTI on social media]. And those two million have millions of friends and family members," he said during preparations for the Google+ Hangout session.
"And while you may be right again that those two million are largely in the cities, they are a degree or two away from spreading our message to the towns and villages. And that's good enough for me."
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