Twitter Loves Hinditva And Here’s Why

Hindi tweets are more likely to be shared and favourited in India when compared to English, said a recent study carried out by researchers, including an Indian. The social media landscape has evolved since 2014 when a majority of the tweets were from the urban-English-speaking population, says the study conducted by Joyojeet Pal and Liz Bozarth from the University of Michigan.

Financial Express has reported that 11 of the 15 most retweeted messages by Indian politicians in the last year have been in Hindi, which is the key indicator for this shift. BJP is said to lead in terms of social media following, “While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party still leads significantly in terms of social media following because of a top-down push from the centre, other parties are also recognising the role of the social media in political outreach,” said Pal, an assistant professor at U-M’s School of Information and the lead author of the study.

Hindi language tweets perform better for both BJP and Congress, and also regional parties post 2016. Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads the way in the number of followers, while Congress President Rahul Gandhi outscores median retweets.

Research also shows that non-Hindi regional language tweets do not perform as well as Hindi or English, “A reason for this can be that his tweets have taken on an aggressive style of confrontation that has helped the popularity of his messages,” Pal said.

The study aligns with previous research that stronger emotions are more likely to be in local language than in English, “We are moving closer to an era in which politicians can actively switch to communicating with their constituents directly through social media, bypassing the traditional news media altogether,” Pal said.