How some politicos fare poorly on Internet and others top the charts

In Tamil Nadu, Vijayakanth is an actor-turned politician whose electoral performance has dipped considerably in recent years. He has been practically written off as a contender for power. Seeman, who heads the Tamil Nationalist Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK), attracts impressionable youth with oratory but his pro-LTTE stance and extreme positions make him a fringe player. Yet if Internet popularity is considered, these two rank higher than even MK Stalin, the president of the DMK. In Kerala, Shashi Tharoor is ahead of Pinarayi but in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, Internet popularity seems to mirror power equations on the ground.

Tool to measure politicians’ reach

Google Trends can be a useful analytical tool to track the Internet footprint of politicians. The tool can be used to determine the popularity of top search queries or keywords over a period of time across various regions and languages. Once a term or a keyword is entered, the website uses graphs to compare its search volume over time.

Depending on the total search volume for that particular keyword, Google shows search interest from 0-100 that is relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. While a score of 100 indicates a peak in popularity for the term, 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.

On Internet, interesting is more significant than the important

MK Stalin’s one peak in his internet buzz rating measured by Google Trends came during the death of his father M Karunanidhi. During the last week of August last year, the search for Vijayakanth attained a peak. The reason could be his health. In August 25, he celebrated his 66th birthday and in August 31, he was admitted to MIOT hospital, Chennai and discharged a couple of days later. Vijayakanth has 34% reach on social media platforms and high positive sentiment among users. Vijayakanth still attracts crowds during his rare appearances. His personal charisma seems intact even though he has been viciously trolled for his personality and simpleton image.

Seeman hit a peak on the Internet during the 2016 Tamil Nadu Assembly election in which he bagged only a few percentage points of votes. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, too, his buzz rating was reaching a peak although he is likely to be squeezed out by the big political parties.

The stock-in-trade of Seeman may not make the cut in mainstream media. His recent recall that he and LTTE leader Prabhakaran shared tortoise meat when they met went viral on social media although much of it was troll attention. Positive or negative, Seeman is a significant presence in Tamil cyber space.

What a dedicated social media strategy can deliver

Seeman’s NTK has a dedicated social media strategy and teams working on it. He is a bit of a hero to Sri Lankan Tamils, many of whom are thankful that while other political leaders in TamilNadu have dropped the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, he has been faithfully upholding their cause.

In comparison, the DMK was a laggard in some areas of Internet reach. The party now has a dedicated IT wing that is active on Twitter. On YouTube, the DMK does not have a dedicated channel. In 2013, Stalin started a channel with 34k subscribers.

In 2017, the rival AIADMK kickstarted a channel in the name of its IT wing, which has just 1,541 subscribers. Even Kamal Hassan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), which started its channel in 2018, has around 71k subscribers. Seeman’s NTK channel has 1.5 lakh subscribers.

The NTK joined Twitter in 2010 following the final Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. The party has 118K followers on Twitter. The DMK started its account a year later in 2011. Currently, it has 228K followers, the highest when compared with the other three parties. Started in 2014, the AIADMK has 136K followers, followed by MNM at 124K followers, which opened the account in 2018.

On Facebook, all the other parties have their own official Facebook pages. The DMK has 2.7 lakh followers, the AIADMK has 2.5 lakh followers and the MNM has 75k followers. NTK has apparently been blacklisted by Facebook. “We started the Facebook page at least 10 times. But every time we created (a Facebook Page) and had more than two lakh followers, someone reported to Facebook about our pages as ‘problematic’. Our pages were closed down, likely because we had pictures of Prabhakaran. I think Facebook has taken a stand against the LTTE,” said Packiyarajan, NTK spokesperson.

Seeman has his roots in the film industry. As an actor he sometimes played the second-hero and tried his hand in direction, too. Unlike others, the NTK has district as well as country-wise Facebook pages such as Middle East, United Arab Emirates and France. While in the two former countries, Tamils from India are present in large numbers, in France, the Lankan Tamil diaspora has significant numbers.

Senthil Kumar, NTK headquarters secretary who supervises the social media accounts, says: “Seeman’s take on Sri Lankan civil war and his continuous upholding of the idea that he will not align with Dravidian parties or with other nationalist parties, has brought him lakhs of supporters and followers. He speaks from his heart, extempore and that has touched many youths. This is the sole reason why the videos containing his speeches go viral within seconds on social media,” he said.

Speaking to The Federal, Packiyarajan, chief spokesperson, NTK said, there are three IT groups which are responsible for the party’s strong presence in social media.

“We have an IT wing, which focuses on the admission process of general public to the party as members. Most of the youths prefer joining our party through our website. Secondly, we have the largest IT employees union, which is absent in other parties. Third, we have a formal social media wing, whose responsibility is to upload and tweet the party’s happenings at right moment,” he said. He added that the party has Assembly constituency-wise WhatsApp groups and he himself was a member in more than 900 such groups.

“If we ask our members to start a WhatsApp group in a constituency, we get more than 10 groups from the particular constituency. Such is our members’ enthusiasm,” he said. NTK uses a #seemanism hashtag for Seeman’s speeches to help drum up support on Twitter.

Telangana

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who is widely seen as the architect of the Telangana statehood movement, is the most searched politician from the state. During the period in December when Assembly polls were held and results declared, KCR dominated google searches in his state.

There was again a surge in the search for KCR around September, 2018. It can be attributed to his surprise decision to dissolve the Assembly on September 6 and opt for early elections, six months ahead of the schedule.

KCR has 29% reach on social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook among others, according to Social Mention, a search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the web in a single platform. Reach is a measure of the range of influence that is based on the number of references by unique authors. In other words, reach is a measure of the visibility of a person on social media. For KCR, two out of three people on social media talk positively about him.

K T Rama Rao, KCR’s son, is known as his political successor and he too has created an internet buzz. His reach is 9% and four out of five people say positive things about him on social media. Revanth Reddy, Congress’s current favourite in the state, ranks lower in google trends but does have a positive sentiment. T Harish Rao is KCR’s nephew known for his organisational skills but has since been sidelined in the party because of the Chief Minister’s preference for his son.

What is noteworthy is that the buzz factor of all the players in Telangana seems to have vanished during the Lok Sabha polls unlike in the recent Assembly elections. This could perhaps be because KCR dominates the scene so much that the the Lok Sabha polls have sparked little interest among Telangana’s netizens.

Andhra Pradesh

Jaganmohan Reddy is certainly ahead in Google Trends, mirroring the perception that he is ahead in the Assembly polls. Reddy has a reach of 4%, however, user sentiments towards him are mixed. Equal number of users say positive as well negative things about him on social media.

Actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan is a close second in terms of evoking interest among netizens. However, his graph has been an undulating one, with highs and lows, reflecting his style of politics marked by a burst of activity followed by a prolonged lull. Pawan is widely seen as an X-factor in Andhra elections. There was a spike in the search in August, 2018. That was the time when Pawan made an unequivocal announcement that his Jana Sena Party would make the electoral debut and contest all the seats. Since then, the interest levels have been fluctuating and saw a surge again when the poll campaign picked up.

Kalyan has a reach of 11% on social media and internet users seem to have a very positive sentiment towards him. On social media, five out of 6 users say positive things about him.

Once a toast of the techie community for his well-crafted cyber-savvy image, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo Chandrababu Naidu has been a poor shadow of his former self. Barring some traction during September-October, 2018 when he had stepped up his fight against the NDA government over the Special Category Status issue, Naidu’s search graph has been generally on the decline. His reach on social media, however, is more than Kalyan and Reddy at 24%.

Karnataka
In May last year when the BJP fell short of half way mark to grab power in the state after the Assembly elections, with 37 seat, Janata Dal (Secular) led by H D Kumaraswamy became the king maker. With his bitter experience of joining hands with the BJP earlier, Kumaraswamy went on to form the government with the support of Congress party which had 78 seats in the state.

Yeddyurappa tried to destabilise the government though ‘operation kamala’, a plan to poach MLA from the ruling coalition, so as to grab power in the state. But his plans and “resort” politics were put to rest by Congress leadership.

The series of developments in Karnataka politics made Kumaraswamy one of the most searched politicians on the Internet in the state. With 5% reach, the politician has a high positive sentiment among social media users with people either saying positive or neutral things about him. There is no negative sentiment towards him on any social media platform.

As the Lok Sabha elections was approaching, by February end Yeddyurappa made a statement saying India’s air strike on Pakistan will help the BJP win 22 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

While he was ridiculed for politicising the army actions, it became a talking point and the party kept nationalism as its core agenda. He has 18% reach on social media platforms and enjoys equal number of positive and negative remarks from users.

Kerala

When Shashi Tharoor contested the elections from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala in March 2009 on a Congress ticket, he could not utter the simplest of Malayalam terms without an English inflection. People were ready to condone that but the southern district was not happy with the way his Malayalam was wrought with the intonations of Palakkad, a northern district. The BJP and the Left were happy about Tharoor’s Malayalam and they were sure of the ‘outsider tasting defeat.’

But as the old Malayalam adage goes, your tongue could take you places. Tharoor won with a margin of over a lakh votes. He became the most-searched and followed political leader in Kerala on the Internet even as he has built a national and international following online.

Closely behind Tharoor was Kerala’s chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan whose non-nonsense approach had earned him laurels and brickbats alike. The chief minister is a reluctant speaker and is mostly reticent. He has a dedicated social media team which keeps updating the government’s initiatives.

Party veteran VS Achuthanandan, 95, draws in the largest crowds even today. He is alien to social media. But, he too remains high on search.

The April 14 spike in Tharoor’s chart was due to the accident he met during the temple offering. There was another spike for Tharoor on October 7, 2018. This was after the speech he made in Abu Dhabhi at a Malayalee Samajam event where he said the Congress could never accept the Hindu Rashtra concept.

Pinarayi Vijayan’s December 30, 2018 spike came just ahead of the January 1 Women’s Wall the party had announced. On New Year Day, the CPM managed to line up approximately 35 lakh women across the state in a symbolic proclamation of women’s rights and freedom. The August 19 spike for the Kerala CM was in the midst of a devastating flood in Kerala. The CM had earned laurels for his handling of the flood situation. Hibi Eden, the other leader mentioned in the graph, is a legislator and the son of the late George Eden, a Kerala politician

(With inputs from Suresh Dharur, Prabhu Mallikarjunan and Sreenath I, Data – Anupa Kujur)