Social Media and the political brand: A case of Narendra Modi Joyojeet Pal University of Michigan 1.

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Social Media and the political brand: A case of Narendra Modi Joyojeet Pal University of Michigan 1

Transcript of Social Media and the political brand: A case of Narendra Modi Joyojeet Pal University of Michigan 1.

Page 1: Social Media and the political brand: A case of Narendra Modi Joyojeet Pal University of Michigan 1.

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Social Media and the political brand: A case of Narendra Modi

Joyojeet PalUniversity of Michigan

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ICTD and Political Cachet

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Politics and Technology in India

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The technology to aspire to…

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On Screen!

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Modi and the Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGAYL8dtic

2002 Riots and After

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Central proposition Social Media, and Twitter specifically serve as a

tool in reshaping Narendra Modi’s political cachet Recast as technocrat

Artifacts as political (Winner) Categories as political (Bowker/Star)

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Growth strategy

2009 start

2010 <13k

2012 Oct, 1 Million

2013 Aug, 2 Million

2014 Jan, 3 Million

2014 May, 4 Million

2014 Jun, 5 Million

2015 Feb, 10 Million

Build on existing base

Re-brand

Ally

Trivialize

Ubiquitize

Followback

Consistency

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The anti-uncool

http://www.bjp.org/

IT Milan: Techie RSS meetings

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Preserving Icons

Technology as a means of exchange on nationalism

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Ally

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Trivialize: Mai Baap

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Ubiquitize

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youtube.com

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…even on Google+

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Who Speaks?

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followbacks

Obama campaign also used: Modi selective

1043 followbacks Celebrities Media Institutions Partner politicians Laypersons Karyakartas

Celebrity followbacks strategic Follows icons w/o reciprocity (Dhoni, Rahman) Icons who symbolize progress (Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates)

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Momentum

10.1 M followers

Did not slow down post election

28 M on Facebook

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Modi vis-à-vis typical political Twitter

Self promotion

Ritualized responses to events

Confrontation

Mostly positive

Banal / “Inspirational”

“India” instead of self

Frequent common man

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Re-brand

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Artifacts as political

Builds on previous Hindutva online base

Apps

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Artifacts as political

Who does a selfie appeal to?

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Artifacts as political

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Categories as political

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Categories as political

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Categories as political

Technology as a means of exchange on nationalism

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(two-way) Panopticon

Discipline from one format to another

Estimated 50,000 highly active followers

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(two-way) Panopticon

Identity online: A fifth of the sample changed their images post Modi follow

Terms like “India First” imply the identity is pan-Indian, not individual

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(two-way) Panopticon

The ‘tap’

Affirming loyalty Obama median

retweet 582 fav 607 Modi median

retweet 1735 fav 1107 *

Obama much more likely to go massively viral Modi 2x 10,000+ Obama 40x 10,000+

based on 3200 tweets from each compared between May 2013 and May 2014, bias for Modi related to post-victory push

Pal, Joyojeet
A random sampling of 10,000 of Modi’s 6.29 million followers in September 2014 using Simply Measured Twitter software () showed his following is largely composed of individuals with a small number of followers themselves. From this random subset, 46.2 percent of his followers were Twitter accounts with no followers, and 88.9 percent had five or fewer. About 60.2 percent of the accounts had never tweeted, and an additional 19 percent had only once sent out a tweet. Only 5.6 percent of all followers had sent out more than 10 tweets since creating Twitter accounts. In other words, this sample estimated that Modi had a central group of 350,000 active followers who regularly read or occasionally retweeted his words. From the total sample studied, 55 were individuals with more than 100 followers and 300 tweets (excluding all identifiable corporate accounts). This suggests that the inner circle of highly active followers with significant reach was closer to 34,000 users at the time of this research.
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(two-way) Panopticon

Reminder from big brother

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(two-way) Panopticon

Organized Trolling

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Who won?

Point not that social media can win elections 155 urban constituencies 13/20 politicians with most followers lost LS in

2014 Yet most Tweeting politicians urban or national

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A means for speaking directly

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A Man For All Seasons

Beyond Hindutva, not past it

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Ahead

New challengers on the block

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Ahead The new word on

mediatization

Public Campaigns

New line in social media research

Cricket still the word!

[email protected]

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