Thread by @joyopal

We systematically studied the #BoycottBollywood activity on social media with attention to drivers and network characteristics.

TL;DR:
1 Ideated by key RW influencers
2 Trended by Sushant Singh Rajput fans
3 Presents South film industry as morally superior

Thread / full paper

We found 1,438,221 tweets from 167,989 accounts, posted b/w Aug 1, and Sep 12, 2022 that used the #BoycottBollywood hashtag.

336 accounts had over 1000 tweets on Bollywood in this period, suggesting organized behavior in a subset of accounts.

We mapped the timeline of when activity peaked, these tend to be just before the release of a film. The bigger budget films tend to get more attacked than the smaller budget films. Most trolling excludes South films, with the exception of Liger

The pattern of trending hashtags to undermine a film is also reflected in the downvoting of films on rating platforms like Google and IMDB.

We found a large number of ghost accounts. 12,889 out of 167,989 accounts that had at least once sent an anti-Bollywood message had 0 followers. This suggests collusive behavior, since an account with no followers has no incentive to flood Twitter with messages.

Several ghost accounts have over 100 tweets in the study period alone, some have thousands.

Most of these do not tweet only about #BoycottBollywood

We thus infer these are likely 'mercenary' accounts or bots that can be employed for a range of topics.

Every ghost account, except one, that solely tweets out #BoycottBollywood content has been created in the last 2 years, suggesting an uptick in anti-Bollywood activity

This is also seen in the rise of accounts using the #BoycottBollywood that were created within the last month.

This trend is also attributable to accounts being de-platformed or suspended. We found that 1950 accounts from our sample had been suspended or banned by the end of the study period, most were high-frequency tweeters.

Such accounts are quickly replaced at little overhead.

Influencers played a key role in propagating #BoycottBollywood, which is only a subset of the larger anti-Bollywood sentiment. Among known journalists, the only organization that repeatedly does this is Sudarshan TV

Politicians avoided this subject – only VHP member Sadhvi Prachi, UP state minister Dinesh Pratap Singh, Andhra BJP Gen Sec Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, and Delhi BJP State Secretary Vaishali Poddar were among major politicians who tweeted for a boycott

Key drivers of the discourse were influencers with high popularity and credibility on right-wing networks including Vivek Agnihotri, Anand Ranganathan, ISKCON Spokesperson Radharamn Das, and venture capitalist Asha Motwani.

A small number of accounts belonging to, or claiming to belong to non-Indian persons played an important role in pushing Bollywood boycotts. These influencers also reappear in many other causes of the right-wing in India.

Two drivers of the conversation are @KreatelyMedia and @ErayCr – both central nodes with high in-degree engagement & ability to go viral quickly.

Attacks are typically aimed at individuals, at films. or characterizations in films, not just the abstract notion of Bollywood

Several key influencers openly use anti-Muslim content, making no attempt to mask it with innuendo.

Influencers who drive the conversation on Twitter are also called on television, where they make the same points.

This expands the sense of this being a broad movement.

BoycottBollywood also uses many of the key tropes from the public discourse that are hot button issues for the right, including “Love Jihad” – Muslim actors who marry Hindu women are particularly attacked

Sushant Singh Rajput is central to the BoycottBollywood case. The SSR community was the first to trend these hashtags, and its key leaders have now turned to general attacks on Bollywood.

Such communities are cohesive and can be quickly weaponized to come after the next target

We also found a number of cases of misinformation, often spread by key accounts with significant online following. Importantly, these accounts do not remove the misinformation, even after it is debunked.

As long as these stay online, someone will believe them, or want to.

We see a images and memes presenting differences between both the narratives and individual stars in Bollywood and in the south. presenting Bollywood as degenerate and separated culturally from the rest of India, while the South Indian film industry retains “traditional” values.

Unlike in Bollywood where a number of Muslim stars are at the top, this is largely not the case in the south, ex Kerala where there are a number of lead actors and filmmakers who are Muslim

Attacks in the south tend to be fan club based or around regional tiffs such as KA vs TN

The Liger boycott is interesting since it was attacked by many of the same accounts that trolled Bollywood films. It is clear here that the system can be gamed, in that any producer can be held ransom with a sufficiently organized troll army.

We also found individuals seeking to use Boycott hashtags as a means of direct financial value through online sales. Several accounts that use boycott hashtags solely to increase footfalls to their Twitter accounts.

The overlaps between BoycottBollywood and other hashtags used by the same community are interesting. While SSR is the most direct connection, we see a lot of Kejriwal trolling and HarGharTiranga messaging in the same community

The connection with SSR is even clearer when we look at the most called-out accounts. The overwhelming majority of mentioned handles are related to the SSR case, only @GemsOfBollywood gets close

However, if you look at who the community of people engaged in BoycottBollywood are retweeting overall, we find a number of key BJP leaders, including @narendramodi. We also see the huge footprint of @KreatelyMedia

The grunt work of actually consistently tweeting and retweeting messages is largely done by insignificant accounts with little following, with the clear explicit intent of hitting trending targets

However, as we look at the visualization of the overall network, we see that there is no single clear pattern.

In effect, there is is a mix of organized trolling and genuine interest in BoycottBollywood.

A good number of people online now likely see Bollywood negatively

This is work by the exceptional @SheyrilAgarwal

A link to the full paper and interactive charts is availale here:

joyojeet.people.si.umich.edu/boycottbollywo…