The ability to speak truth to power, or challenge a relatively powerful or influential person this way highlighted the potential potency of tweets.Ĭongress leader Shashi Tharoor knows all about it. Giving us a brand name "Internet Hindus" was the biggest mistake did in her journalistic career. Two years later, it was still giving fodder to TV debates. “Right wing supporters in general were furious with that comment,” Vikas Pandey said. they come swarming after you at any mention of Modi Muslims or Pakistan! In January 2010, four years before the BJP came to power, journalist Sagarika Ghose tweeted that “Internet Hindus” were like “swarms of bees” who attacked “at any mention of Modi Muslims or Pakistan”. Twitter was a contentious space even more than a decade ago. Recognising this, BJP supporters organised themselves to use this feature to counter contradicting views. When you comment on someone’s tweet, your views will show up in the Twitter feeds of others too. The beauty of Twitter’s algorithm is that an ordinary person’s tweets can be as visible as those of the rich, famous, and powerful. Illustration: Prajna Ghosh, Manisha Yadav | ThePrint A virtual battleground However, Twitter was never just about straightforward communication. Twitter Seva effectively meant the government under Modi could perform its basic job of being accountable to the public via Twitter. Twitter executives like Khursheed promoted it as “a customised e-governance delivery service” that would increase the Twitter outreach of various ministries and make it easier and faster to address citizen queries and complaints than traditional systems. This happy relationship with the platform went a step further in 2016 with Twitter Seva, a feature made with the Indian government in mind. He further noted the PM’s cabinet was “flocking” to Twitter, with “nearly 40 ministers and ministries already sharing daily updates with their followers”. In June 2014, Raheel Khursheed, the then Twitter head of news partnerships, wrote with some exhilaration about the PM’s “Twitter-First” strategy, pointing out that within one month, Twitter had emerged as “the key platform to keep track of what the government is busy with: the PM has been using his personal handle complimented by his office’s official handle to share updates”. With the PM’s blessings, other ministers and government departments also started getting on Twitter. When the BJP came to power in 2014, Modi continued to use Twitter as his de facto platform to communicate with the public. “I didn’t see how Twitter was more special than other platforms for the longest time,” he added. He understood what social media can do in an election,” Pandey, who also volunteered for the BJP’s 2014 campaign, told ThePrint. “Modi ji is a visionary, miles ahead of others. Vikas Pandey, a trained software engineer who since 2002 has set up several pro-Hindu-Right-wing online groups (with names like “RSS” and “Hinduism”) and worked as a volunteer for the party’s online campaign in 2014, praised Modi’s “foresight”. In January 2009, he became one of the earliest Indian politicians to join Twitter his Facebook page started several months later in May 2009. Modi, meanwhile, had wised up to the benefits of Twitter when he was still chief minister of Gujarat. “No one would have thought back then that Twitter or any social media could impact social harmony or electoral processes as much as they do today,” he said, adding that, in this period, the IT cell did not even set up Twitter accounts for Modi or other BJP leaders. Prodyut Bora, the first IT cell head of the BJP (he has since resigned from the party), told ThePrint that during his stint between 20, Twitter was barely factored into the party’s digital strategy. Indeed, Modi saw the importance of Twitter well before even the BJP’s IT experts did. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not only the most followed Indian on Twitter (with 7.3 crore followers as of Sunday evening), he is also a major reason for the platform’s growth in India. You dominate what these influential people see, the idea goes, you dominate what the masses are going to see.Īlso Read: Modi now has over 70mn Twitter followers, BJP says he is ‘most followed head of state’ in world
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