• UP Elections 2022

    Midpoint Melodrama: UP Political Twitter Halfway through Polling Phases

    We examined the use of Twitter by 10426 politicians from Uttar Pradesh, across all levels of seniority, midway into the phases of polling in the Uttar Pradesh elections of 2022, starting January 1, 2022, and up until March 1, 2022. We summarize here our key findings by examining four key questions. How does Twitter relate to Urbanization and Literacy? To address the first question, we examined the number of urban residents by location, and levels of literacy, and find there is a statistically significant relationship between both the number (and percentage) or urban residents and the likelihood that politicians in that area use Twitter, as well as with the level…

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  • UP Elections 2022

    What #hashtag wars tell us about the organization of Uttar Pradesh IT cells, and how parties mark their allies and enemies

    Pitched battles on Twitter are increasingly common among the key players in the Uttar Pradesh elections, since the praises, innuendo, and insults that take shape and virality on Twitter often find new lives on other social media such as WhatsApp, but also on mainstream television and web-based news. We studied nine parties contesting the state legislative elections in Uttar Pradesh – BJP, SP, INC, RLD, BSP, AIMIM, Nishad Party, AAP, and Apna Dal, and collected the hashtags used by over 11,000 politicians at various levels, from sitting MPs and MLAs to party workers. We collected all the hashtags used by the said politicians during Sep 2021 to Jan 2022. We…

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  • UP Elections 2022

    Uttar Pradesh Elections and Twitter: The Cast of Characters

    The Uttar Pradesh elections are being fought on social media just as much as they are in the physical spaces of the campaign. While messages forwarded on WhatsApp are a significant piece of what drives peoples’ political opinions, the primary means of official branding continues to be Twitter for most of the parties and major leaders within the parties. Over the coming weeks, a collaboration between the University of Michigan and IIIT-Hyderabad will analyse the use of social media by politicians on various aspects of the electoral campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

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  • Experiences,  Research,  Social Computing

    The long winding road of a research project …

    Every research project has its journey, and this is the story of one of them. My (5th year Dual Degree CSE student) tryst with this research project titled ‘Suspended Accounts’ started way back in July 2019. It’s been over two years since the project’s inception.  It took over two years to complete this project, a sign that it wasn’t the smoothest of rides. I am using this blog as a medium to pen down some takeaways that I took from my first experience leading a research project. Again I will emphasize that these are my takeaways and are not universally applicable.  Prune the Project: We went into the project with…

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  • Research,  Social Computing

    Challenging big social media, falling to partisanship: The Koo Conundrum

    We examined the use of social media by politicians on Koo to understand the spread of political preference and engagement for the social media channel that has sought to challenge Twitter online. We find that the broad trend is not partisan, but almost entirely dominated by a single political party, the BJP. Moreover, we find that there is a clear pattern of repeat use, where politicians are not switching away from other platforms, but rather using Koo in addition to, and more importantly, as a secondary option to their existing accounts on Twitter. Both of these have consequences for the longer-term adoption of Koo, and the content experience of new…

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  • COVID 19,  Research,  Social Computing

    Is a Democrat more likely to wear a mask than a Republican?? Unmasking the partisan combat, an analysis through Instagram

    We analyze 3.91 million Instagram posts collected throughout 2020 from the 4 top Democratic and 4 top Republican states. Posts from Democratic states were found to have significantly higher percentages of detected masks, and significantly lower percentages of group photos, showing higher adoption of mask-wearing and social distancing measures than Republican states. The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed life in the world including, United States, with the country recording over 32.3 million cases and 574,000 deaths as of April, 2020. With the ongoing widespread vaccine rollout, the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions like mask-wearing mandates and stay-at-home laws have proved to be critical for stopping possible transmission routes. In the lead-up to…

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  • Research,  Social Computing

    Koo: The New King? Characterizing India’s Emerging Social Network

    India’s recent multilingual social network, Koo, has generated quite a buzz in the past few months. The platform, which closely resembles the microblogging service Twitter, was launched in March 2020 to encourage online discourse in Indian languages. Koo saw an enormous surge in popularity due to the Indian Government’s standoff with Twitter over the latter’s refusal to block accounts the Centre claimed were spreading fake news related to the February 2021 farmers’ protests. Many politicians, celebrities, and government departments tweeted about their shift to Koo and encouraged others to join.  As Koo became the talk of the town, we decided to collect data and characterize the platform based on its…

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  • Capitol Arrests,  Capitol Riots,  Research,  Social Computing

    Capitol Riots/Aftermath : The Road from Washington to Arrest

    In the aftermath of the Capitol riots that took place on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors continue to charge participants involved. USA TODAY is gathering details of these cases as the FBI keeps identifying and prosecuting more perpetrators involved in the storming. They have compiled a list [Link] of people arrested on a range of charges filed by federal prosecutors, as well as those arrested by Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police for storming the capitol building. Information for each arrest includes the date of arrest/charge, home state, the charges and a brief summary of what happened. We have collected data from the first arrest taking place…

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  • #LokSabhaElections2019,  Elections2019,  Phase6,  Research,  Social Computing,  VotingRound6

    #LokSabhaElections2019 #NCT #Delhi Political Handles, Popularity

    The constituencies in the NCT of Delhi are scheduled to go for elections on May 12th as part of phase six, in this analysis we take a closer look at the constituencies, candidates, their social media handles, etc. There are seven constituencies in Delhi, and 164 candidates will be contesting across these constituencies. 148 (90.25%) of the total candidates are males while 16 (9.75%) of the total candidates are females. We went through all the Affidavits* submitted by the candidates to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to collect each candidate’s demographics and social media details. The table below covers the distribution of social media handles that we were able…

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