Politicians are choosing to be interviewed by YouTubers instead of journalists. This will change the face of political interviewing in the 2024 elections and undermine professional journalism during the campaign cycle

A thread, & link to the research
joyojeet.people.si.umich.edu/?p=1375
We examined channels of five high-influence YouTubers @TechnicalGuruji @CurlyTalesIndia @BeerBicepsGuy @ElvishYadav @DrVivekBindra

All are more followed than most Indian news channels.

All the interviews were non-confrontational, with little serious policy examination.

Full papers & recordings of all talks at "Social Media and Society in India" covering topics from caste, gender, and hate speech to travel, activism, and online financial advice in India from influencers, academics, industry practitioners now public:

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https://t.co/qmBOsP7KiKjoyojeet.people.si.umich.edu/influencers.htm
Supreme Court advocate @karunanundy spoke about social media and the law, addressing the notion of constructed virality and the spread of disinformation, particularly by men’s rights associations.

A link to her full talk:

There is a large scale, organized attack against DY Chandrachud on social media, presenting him as an internal enemy, a foreign agent, and a threat to democracy.

We examined Twitter activity to seek out the drivers of this attack, and the narratives these help build. Chandrachud (and the collegium) are presented as a danger to democracy.

This reminds followers that even if opposition is neutered, there are challenges to the nation to fear.

This notion of the CJI as part of a liberal/globalist perpetual threat is an important trope,

The drama series #jubilee based on Bombay Talkies has an interesting connection to Savarkar and Sri Aurobindo (if you stretch it, to Gandhi and Modi)

Besides Himansu Rai and Devika Rani, there is a less known but bizarre story of a third founder of the studio, Niranjan Pal.

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https://twitter.com/Paperclip_In/status/1648895321781719041

When Devika Rani was sent to England, she lived at the home of a family friend Niranjan Pal and his wife Lily Bell, a rare multi-racial couple in the 1920s, at their home in Paddington.

Soros is one of the most abused people on social media & was recently trolled on Twitter for his comments on Modi/Indian democracy.

We studied the Twitter response, which is enlightening on collective political tweeting and Indians’ position on Global right-leaning movements

🧵 Some tropes in common with the Global attacks on Soros: head of a global cabal, installing puppet regimes, attacks on NGOs funded by Soros etc

Differences on Indian Twitter: lack of antisemitic content, calling him anti-Hindu an anti-US thread, tying Soros to INC and liberals

These unclassified US State Dept documents show tension b/w the State department position on Modi in the Gujarat riots, the US government’s acknowledgement of Modi’s rising stature, and a powerful group of NRIs in rehabilitating his image.

Thread: A 2002 cable to embassies & consulates in the region about the riots – suggests that Advani delay in going to Gujarat exacerbated riots, Modi did not act, and that BJP benefited from riots since poor performance on Guj earthquake would have weakened re-election prospects

If the BBC Documentary is to be blocking, we may want to think about blocking the US Congressional records as well, since a number of documents publicly available, including a bill introduced in Congress, say roughly the same thing about Modi's role in the riots.

A thread. The first major document to call out Modi specifically was the "International Religious Freedom Report 2002" - here is a link, hosted at the US State Department page.

The report notes US Consular officials traveled to Ahmedabad after the riots

2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/…

We studied anti-feminist Indian groups on Twitter

TL;DR
Emerged during #MeToo
Overlaps with SSR, Hindutva groups on #BoycottBollywood , Anti-Chandrachud campaign
Organized around Shraddha Walker by moving to Islamophobia
Top profile descriptions: students, engineers, lawyers
🧵 Trigger alerts: Several of the media items here are likely to trigger reactions While we have removed identifying information, and filtered highly offensive content, even the material we are willing to show here is misogynistic and abusive on multiple levels.

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.

If you plan to leave your homeland to do PhD research on your homeland in another country, a few things to keep in mind about your likely new title -- an area scholar, something you didn't know you were, till you transgressed a boundary. Doing a PhD in institutions in the homeland can be difficult for various reasons

1. there are few top-tier places, those are super competitive
2. the funding/research infra elsewhere may be better
3. some heavyweight advisors are themselves reduced to 'area scholars' wherever

For students considering a PhD in the HCI or associated fields, if you don't see being a professor/academic when you finish, seriously reconsider doing the PhD.

At the very least, definitely reconsider mentioning this straight off to someone who you may want as an advisor. Non-academic jobs in tech, including industry labs that are on a spectrum from similar to academia (eg @MSFTResearch, less so @hplabs) to work that is more systems-focused such as @googIeresearch or @Meta, or of course product groups in any big tech.

Our work "Insights Into Incitement: A Computational Perspective on Dangerous Speech on Twitter in India" just won an honorable mention @acmcompass.

It shows why "dangerous speech", rather than "hate speech" helps understand online incitement in India, using large-scale data

1/n Dangerous speech is actively propagated, rewarded, and endorsed in increasingly polarized, and subsequently radicalized echo chambers.

It is distinct from explicit hate speech, and machine language classifiers often miss, or misclassify it.

The consistent anti-Bollywood trending emerges from a group of dedicated Sushant Rajput fans whose networks, history & output give insight into the radicalization of online populations & organized trolling in India.

It's also a failure story of Twitter as a platform

Thread: The community treats the death of Sushant in the same way that religious communities treat dogma. There can be no evidential argument on it. In this it is closer to the communities that spread theories about the death of Diana Spencer than typical online fan-clubs

In light of recent events in India, our paper "Narrative Building in Propaganda Networks on Indian Twitter" out today at #WebSci22 sheds some light on how hyper-partisan information is repeated, especially through a selection of influencers who consistently go viral.

A thread:

https://twitter.com/ingmarweber/status/1541705273286561793

We curated and studied a large amount of data (over 80 million tweets in Hindi and English tweets from over 26000 politicians and 6000 influencers), for propagandist content.

Rejoicing an Indian film winning IMDB's GOAT rating?

As someone who studies these things, we only won the population war.

You can go watch Kashmir Files to confirm if it is the greatest film ever, or I can explain with data, if that does anything for you, why @IMDb is broken Kashmir Files has a near total top end rating. Films don't get rated as magnificent universally. Usually there is a spread of people who love, hate, and most importantly, have moderate opinions.

See for instance comparison with Godfather and Dark Night, high rated films on IMDB

We studied military veterans party engagement on Indian Twitter

TL;DR
BJP has huge advantage w/ military veterans
A small number of very political veterans are hugely influential
Veterans are politically useful, but politicians rarely tweet back when veterans ask them for help Despite iconic Subhas Bose, military & political leadership traditionally kept apart.

Veterans eschewed electoral politics, but with regular exceptions incl Jaswant Singh, Rajesh Pilot, Amarinder, JS Aurora etc.

Since 2014, sizable increase in veterans joining politics.

We examined Twitter messaging related to the Hijab Ban.

TL;DR

Most engagement is anti-Ban, but loudest influencers are pro-Ban

Most people with opinions on the issue are male

Most major politicians, incl those claiming secular credentials, dodged the issue, ex Gandhis

1/n The most engaged accounts are influencers on the right who lean pro-ban. However, the overall Twitter engagement is 5x higher on the anti-ban side.

This suggests an influencer-driven strategy for the pro-ban side.

UP election hashtags study:
1. Smaller alliance parties (RLD, ApnaDal etc) hashtag about larger partners (BJP, SP), don't get reciprocated!
2. BJP hashtags more positive-themed, INC most antagonistic
3. Alliance parties prefer talking about Modi, State BJP wants to focus on Yogi We find a high degree of organization among all parties, suggesting active IT cells generating hashtags.

All non-alliance partners attack the BJP.

SP and INC avoid attacking each other, but BSP, AIMIM do attack other non-BJP parties, suggesting potential of eating into votes.

Did Twitter systematically undermine Rahul Gandhi's following on the platform?

We look at the data. TL;DR, inconclusive, but clearly suspicious.

We do a deep dive into the numbers and find @RahulGandhi's dropped following (statistically significantly) anomalous. Rahul Gandhi is the only major politician whose following has an anomalous drop in mid-2021. Twitter explained this as a purging of problematic/spam accounts

If so, what explains that only he had spam accounts that needed to be removed in a staggered fashion, ie accruing monthly

We studied the Twitter behavior of the spyware-targeted journalists in India to see which way they lean. No surprises, most lean anti-Government but a few on the pro-Gov side as well.

This document confirms that through data.

Three other trends. Several journalists targeted cover security, domestic & int'l or diplomacy incl @saikatd @rahulsinghx @DevirupaM @JhaPremshankar @SushantSin @SandeepUnnithan @vijaita @Smita_Sharma

Inordinate no of Kashmir/Punjab journos. Overall most targeted are from @thewire_in and @htTweets

I went to the US mainly to exploit a student visa & jump to a job at the first opp. I failed, ended up doing a PhD with no academic interest, mainly to dodge deportation.

Eventually I became a college professor, then quit to become a lanyard-wearing Bangalore techie

thread:

https://twitter.com/AnooBhu/status/1399443809423945728

Look at study abroad as bigger than the money you spend for it. It's an incredible privilege to have that resource. But you're not paying for the degree - you are paying for the places, people, worldviews, cultures you experience.