IIT Delhi: Verified political handles up 1,663% in 5 years

NEW DELHI: Social media is going to be an important weapon in the electoral battleground this year. This is clear from the rise in the number of verified political handles from 71 to 1,252 between 2014 and March this year, with 78% of these handles belonging to members of BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.


Research conducted by students and scholars at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi, and the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, also found that 37% of the verified handles originated in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, making them the hub of online realpolitik.

The research was initiated in IIIT-D in September 2018 by eight students and a principal researcher to assess the impact of social media on the 2019 general elections. “We analysed over 21 million posts by roughly a million handles since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls,” said Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, associate professor in both the institutions.

He added that he and his team then covered the data related to 2,585 Twitter handles that were affiliated to an Indian political party. “This list was manually curated and we have been collecting data for these handles from late 2018 through the Twitter Application Programming Interface,” Kumaraguru said.

He said that of the chosen handles, 1,252 political handles were found to be verified. “It is interesting to see such a large number of verified accounts for this year’s election,” the professor said. “In comparison, when we analysed the Twitter data for the 2014 elections, we found only 71 verified Indian political handles. This shows how big a jump there has been in the number of such handles.”

Kumaraguru said that the team also examined the handles for their state representation, party affiliation and Lok Sabha /Rajya Sabha affiliations. “We found that more than 70% of the verified accounts of BJP and Congress accounts put together. If AAP is included, the figure goes up to 78%,” he explained. “This indicates social media is important for the national parties. We are keen to analyse the data to study interesting patterns like diversity of topics and the manner in which the campaigns are carried out.”

Congress, which has lagged BJP on social media, picked up its game last year when its leaders created 35 new Twitter handles in a single day and which were later verified.