In a world where social media is used as a very important weapon in an electoral war, Twitter is often used as a place to birth and conduct internet campaigns. These internet campaigns often use various techniques to get more people involved than their opponents, side with a political party and lend their voice to the political party of their choice.
More often than not, the ones with the most influential campaigns win the elections. Here’s how the top three parties have performed so far in the past two-three months, campaigning online for the Delhi Assembly elections.
In this study, likes and retweets by genuine users were considered, bots and third-party twitter clients have been negated so as to judge the engagement of potential electors.
BJP’s Delhi account is followed by 5.72 lakh accounts, while Congress has 1.07 lakh accounts following them and AAP has 1.03 lakh followers.
Engagement
According to engagement data from AAP’s Delhi Twitter handle, it was found that, on average, each tweet garnered 42 favourites per tweet while 123 retweets was the average each tweet received. BJP’s Delhi account received 513.154 favourites per tweet and 455 retweets per tweet. Congress’ Delhi handle received 448 favourites for a tweet and 423 retweets per tweet.
AAP Delhi has the lowest engagement metrics compared to BJP and Congress in Delhi. Despite Congress having a significantly lower number of followers, Congress engagement metrics are just a shade below BJP’s engagement which is the highest.
Activity
BJP’s Delhi account is the most active of the three major parties in Delhi with them tweeting 27.3 times a day. AAP tweets 20.3 times day whilst Congress is the least active with just 17.6 tweets a day.
Activity throughout the day
AAP has tweeted the most around 12 noon and the Twitter handle is most active on Monday and Friday. However, their activity is spread across the week more evenly than BJP and Congress Delhi Twitter handles.
BJP has been the most active between 8 am and 10 am. They also tweet in volumes on Sunday and Monday and significant activity can be seen on other days of the week.
Congress’ Delhi handle sees its highest activity levels between 11 am and 1 pm but their tweets are better spread across the day compared to AAP and BJP’s Delhi accounts. However, they are most active on Mondays with about 18.5% of their tweets being published on Mondays.
Weekly activity distribution
Hashtags
AAP’s most used hashtags include “#LageRahoKejriwal”, “#KejriwalPhirSe” and “#AAPkecandidates” which promote the party’s leader and one showcasing its candidates and does not attack other parties.
BJP Delhi’s top hashtags are, “#JhoothiAAPSarkar”, “#AAPBurningDelhi” and “#DelhiWithBJP”. Out of these three hashtags, two are against AAP, accusing them of ‘lying’ and ‘burning’ Delhi and one portraying that Delhi is with the BJP.
Congress’ most used hashtags are, “#कांग्रेस_वाली_दिल्ली”, “#DelhiKiBaat” and “#BharatBachaoRally”. The first hashtag in Hindi portrays Delhi siding with Congress, the second is play on PM Modi’s Mann ki Baat programme and the third is unrelated to Delhi assembly elections but tweets using this hashtag portray the desire to save India from other parties, particularly the BJP.
Language
Congress has tweeted the least in Hindi with about 70% of their tweets being in the language compared to 82% of BJP’s tweets and 81% of AAP’s tweets. BJP has tweeted the least in English with only about 17% of their tweets being in English compared to Congress’ 26% and AAP’s 18%.