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Role of Twitter in trending wars


By Niticentral Staff on August 13, 2013

 
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http://www.niticentral.com/emailshare/emailshare.php?pid=118256&url;=http://www.niticentral.com/2013/08/13/role-of-twitter-in-trending-wars-118256.html&title;=Role of Twitter in trending wars&id;=nc

Tags: Narendra Modi, Politics, BJP, Congress, Twitter, Social media, campaign, NaMo, shashi tharoor, trolls, NAMOinHYD, Twitter India, Twitter bias, fekuexpress, eNREGA

First sample this tweet.

Role of Twitter in trending wars

Next sample this Twitter exchange.

Role of Twitter in trending wars

Under ordinary circumstances this would be a random social media reaction to a political event and an innocuous twitter exchange between two random individuals.

But then there is a twist once you pay attention to who the said individuals are. The former is a Top Executive of the social media platform Twitter in India. The latter is an official spokesperson of the Congress.

April 4, 2013, the date of the exchange, was also significant for it was on the same day that Rahul Gandhi made his maiden appearance at a business summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, CII.

Before we get into that, first some background.

Role of Twitter in trending wars

It is absolutely normal for two individuals chatting on the open ‘Time Line’ or through Direct Messages. But what strikes the most is that the conversation on April 4, 2013 followed Rahul Gandhi’s CII Speech in the morning and after #PappuCII trended globally on twitter that day all day.

Congress sympathisers on social media, popularly referred to as #TwitterNrega / #eNrega, came into prominence soon after this conversation, for the first time ever on social media, on April 8, 2013 when they managed to ‘trend’ a sponsored tweet.

It is no secret that Congress has deep pockets and it was proved after fake likes for Ashok Gehlot from Istanbul , a feat recently replicated by Ajay Maken of Congress too. Incidentally Maken is in charge of Congress’s social media communications.

As Narendra Modi’s much anticipated Hyderabad rally date approached, Anil Kohli, a Twitter user, reported that he had received this paid offer for sponsored tweets @ $ 0.50 per tweet. This is just one example of how Twitter ‘trends’ are being sponsored.

Looking at the hashtag, it is not tough to guess who is behind this.

Finally, on August 11, 2013 when Narendra Modi addressed a mammoth rally in Hyderabad, Twitter was totally MODIfied. But to the surprise of many, the hashtag of the day #NaMoInHyd was intermittently popping and disappearing from the Top 10 Trends while a rival hashtag, sponsored by the Congress, was consistently in the Top 10 Trends.

This defies both conventional wisdom on social media and logic given the order of magnitude gap in the number of Twitter updates posted with either hashtag. As revealed by a social media analytics tool, Tweets mentioning #NaMoInHyd were about 24,000 when checked around 10.30 pm on the evening of August 11, while those mentioning the Congress-sponsored hashtag were only 8,700.

Social media has assumed immense importance in political campaigning in India in recent months. This follows high profile social media interventions by prominent politicians like Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, Shashi Tharoor, among others.

A second reason for all the attention that social media has been drawing lately is that mainstream media has tended to source its stories from what goes on in social media.

It is an indisputable fact that in the domain of political campaigning on social media it is the fans of Narendra Modi who have tended to dominate the discourse. ‘Trending Topics’ are the means by which social media platforms like Twitter measure which conversations are dominating the discourse on a given day and at a given time. It has thus been natural that on most days when a political event of consequence occurs in India the ‘trending topics’ have tended to be influenced strongly by fans of Narendra Modi.

It was thus curious to see this tweet exchange on April 4, 2013, between Rishi Jaitly (who leads @TwitterIndia as per his bio) and Priyanka Chaturvedi (one of the official spokespersons of the Congress).

Role of Twitter in trending wars

When the statistics were once again checked on the same social media analytics tool the subsequent morning, it was found that the hashtag #NaMoInHyd had 68,561 tweets while the Congress-sponsored hashtag was found in merely 26,787 tweets.

Role of Twitter in trending wars

According to Twitter, ‘trends’ are less about tweet volume and more about a sudden surprise by a conversation spike. This explanation confuses things more, if trends map of the previous evening are examined.

 

Role of Twitter in trending wars

As can be seen from the trendsmap image above, the Congress-sponsored hashtag is nowhere to be found on the map. Hence Twitter’s explanation is at variance from what is shown through trends map and other analytical tools.

Incidentally, an investigation of the kind of tweets carrying the Congress-sponsored hashtag has revealed how the Congress may have outsourced its Twitter trending campaign to some kind of an automated tweet posting operation as is evident from the below image. The use of automated bots by the Congress to drive up the volume of tweets around its sponsored hash tag in a way is reflective of both its desperation to make noise on social media as well as diminish the medium’s credibility with non-serious and borderline defamatory content.

It’s a known fact that twitter entertains sponsored trends. But Twitter tainting the credibility of its own medium in this manner makes one wonder how seriously Twitter Inc takes its own reputation in India.

Most of the Twitter Trending Topics in India are the result of spontaneous reactions of Indian citizens frustrated with the Congress-led UPA Government on the one hand and spontaneous reactions of Fans of Narendra Modi who see the mainstream media as biased, on the other.

Mr. Modi himself has maintained a statesmanlike attitude on social media despite direct and cheap provocations by senior Congress Leaders like Digivijay Singh and Ajay Maken on Twitter. In recent days Narendra Modi made two very meaningful interventions through an interview to ANI and through a blog post for India Today on the importance of social media and on the need to keep all discourse on it healthy.

As a private citizen Rishi Jaitly is surely entitled to express his political views on Twitter but …..

Role of Twitter in trending wars

…. we hope that his employer takes the cue from Narendra Modi and desists from reducing itself to a platform that promotes the Congress’s sponsored dirty tricks in India.

Editor’s note: I had tweeted to @rsjaitly and @TwitterIndia (led by him) seeking their views on Twitter’s political bias, in keeping with the best traditions of journalism, on August 12. Till 6.20 pm on August 13, neither had responded. We can, therefore, presume they either do not wish to comment or have refused comment. – Kanchan Gupta.

(Research by Suresh Nakhua @sureshnakhua)


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Comments (12)

  1. Hi Dada, some strange things happening to my account on twitter… this happens just cpl of days after the lady mentioned above has blocked me…

    thumbs-up8thumbs-down0

  2. Trend #sack_rsjaitly and also message Twitter US teams and their CEO.

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  3. Very well. Let congress be content with fake twitter handles and fake trends. They probably do not understand that real trends and real twitter handles have a high chance of 1 voter behind every handle whereas fake handle will have 1 voter behind 1000 handles.

    congressis are even bigger moron than one thought.

    let the fake handles bloom …

    thumbs-up8thumbs-down0

  4. technical war is back bone for every war on surface, feeling nice to know that ur team is upto the mark to counter all techno corruption which is going behind the seen. good luck

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  5. Congress said that they want to invest in social media, little did we know that they meant investing in the TOP management to skew the data.

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  6. This clear bias in favour of Congress Party and needs to be reported to the Twitter Boss world wide so that Rishi Jaitly is sacked. May be start a petition against Jaitly also. NitiCentral can do it.

    There is however a possibility that someone is using Jaitly name unauthorizedly.

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  7. Good analysis by @sureshnakhua.Hope twitter takes Rishi jaitley to task for using twitter to further his own agenda.

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  8. Greate research….Twitter shoulds stop dirty tricks of congress.

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  9. Very sinister and very disturbing.But great investigative piece.Compliments to Suresh Nakhua.
    @ Suresh Nakhua, BTW yesterday I rcd so many retwits [Twitter@JitendraDesai] from VISHWA SAMVAD KENDRA all related to FEKU.What was that?

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  10. Social Media Too be included in Congress’s List of Corruption’s eNREGA

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  11. Send tweets to top Twitter management in the USA:

    1. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo – @dickc San Francisco
    2. Ali Rowghani – @ROWGHANI – Twitter COO, P
    3. Mike Gupta – @mgupta CFO of Twitter
    4. matt derella @Derella
    5. Gabriel Stricker @gabrielstricker – Twitter VP of Marketing & Communications.

    Here is what we did:
    @dickc @ROWGHANI @mgupta @Derella @gabrielstricker @twitter & @twitterIndia CREDIBILITY is at stake? http://goo.gl/5Q8AwC PL INVESTIGATE !

    Then send tweets to international media as we did:
    @WSJ Investigate corruption @Twitter in #NaMoInHyd vs. #FekuExpress CEO @dickc COO @ROWGHANI & CFO @mgupta http://goo.gl/5Q8AwC

    Same with others such as @NYTimes @NYTIndia. Look for more international media sites & journalsits. Keep CXOs also in the tweets to keep up the pressure. Do NOT bother to tweet to @RSJaitley or to @TwitterIndia. You know whose CHAMCHAs they are!

    thumbs-up10thumbs-down1

  12. Thank you for this expose.

    thumbs-up0thumbs-down0

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