Data analysis decodes PM’s recent Twitter blitzkrieg

How often does the Prime Minister (PM) of India tweet and what does he tweet about?

An analysis carried out by IndiaSpend shows that PM Narendra Modi’s personal Twitter handle, @narendramodi, tweeted 2,143 times between October 2018 and March 2019, averaging about one tweet every two hours.

In October, @narendramodi tweeted 16 times a day on an average but this dropped to nine tweets in February 2019 and again rose to an an average of 11 times a day in March 2019. He also mentioned the handle of his political party, @BJP4India, the most - 31 times.

The most popular tweets, retweeted the most by his followers, included those relating to the Pulwama attack that killed at least 40 CRPF personnel on Feb. 14 and his campaign ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ in response to Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s jibe “Chowkidar chor hai [the watchman is a thief]”.

Other popular tweets focused on events such as Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations. The hashtag #Gandhi150 was the most used hashtag by the PM’s account and was used 84 times in the week of Oct. 15, 2018, when the PM tweeted the most -- 239 times. The second most used hashtag was #MannKiBaat (31 times) to promote his monthly radio show.

Notably, Republic TV (English and Hindi) were the only media outlets retweeted (nine times), after their exclusive interview with the prime minister aired.

The maximum likes (271,932) and retweets (66,485), were for the tweet that welcomed Wing Commander Abhinandan back to India.

Earlier this year, a study by Joyojeet Pal, associate professor at the University of Michigan found that the prime minister engaged celebrities on Twitter to increase his visibility and help his electoral ambitions during the run-up to the 2014 general elections in India.

“By engaging with celebrities on social issues or items that are outside of solely political matters, politicians can present the spectre of being actively engaged with matters of national relevance, and indeed furthering the conversation by engaging key public figures in it. The real threat is to the quality of democratic discourse with a silent, or actively collusive social elite,”  Joyojeet Pal had written for LiveMint.