Thread by @KhandekarOmkar

Since 2018, @joyopal and a team of researchers studied Twitter discourse by Indian public figures. They found how BJP succeeded in cultivating goodwill among a large number of them using a carrot-and-stick approach. A thread.
themorningcontext.com/internet/how-b…

Compared to their US counterparts, Indian sportspersons seldom take positions on political and social issues. When they do, it’s often to endorse the PM or the government’s initiatives. The Twitter activity spikes most on PM Modi's birthday.

Two-thirds of the defence-related accounts examined showed a moderate to strong bias towards the BJP. This included military veteran, defence experts and journalists.

Journalists have become extremely polarized. Nearly 2/3rd of those with a million+ followers tended to tweet for or against the BJP. Only three journalists appealed across party lines: Rahul Kanwal, Shekhar Gupta and Chitra Tripathi.

None of the CEOs in India addressed issues related to democratic rights or governance. They looked for tweets on specific words — “lynching”, “lynch”, “mob attack”, “mob lynching”, “Tabrez Ansari”, “#DalitLivesMatter”, “#MuslimLivesMatter”—and found only a single tweet.

Some support was organic, some stage-managed. The BJP amplified supporters of the govt; dissenters were trolled and shut down. Next time you say Modi is India’s Teflon PM, know it’s because there’s a large machinery ensuring that is so.
More here:
themorningcontext.com/internet/how-b…