4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal
T13P05 Session 1
Big Data Challenges for Campaigning and Mobilisation - “Hello, IT... Have You Tried Turning it Off and On Again?”
Title of the paper
What Do Political Parties in India Tweet? : Identifying Valence Issues in the 2014 General Elections in India Based on Tweets of Bhartiya Janta Party and Indian National Congress
Author
Devyani Pande
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore
Friday, June 28th, 10:30 - 12:30 MultiSession 7 (Room: MB S2.105)
Work in Progress. PLEASE DO NOT CITE.
1
Abstract
The use of social media for political campaigning during elections by political parties has been very prevalent in the developed nations. It was for the first time in India during the
2014 elections that political parties and politicians adopted the use of social media for political campaigning. The communication by political parties and information disseminated during this period is considered an antecedent to agenda-setting in the policy process. A key element in the electoral studies and political communication is valence issues, issues for which both political parties and voters concur. This study attempts to identify and compare the valence issues discussed on Twitter by the two major political parties in India – Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress
(INC) based on the theoretical framework of valence politics involving issue competition.
By using topic modeling and word associations on the software R, this study has tried to throw light on the valence issues discussed by the two parties and finds that they were rather different for both parties. While BJP focused more on party promotion and less on discussion of valence issues over Twitter, the INC seemed to broadcast valence issues such as economic growth, inflation, health and education along with party promotions on their Twitter account. The findings are significant to understand how political parties use Twitter for campaigning and would throw light on future use of the platform for campaigning.
Key words: Elections, Twitter, India, BJP, INC, valence, topic modeling
2 1. Introduction
With the advent of internet , the use of social media platforms has greatly influenced democratic politics (Kanungo, 2015). In the recent times, political parties have begun to use platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as a form of communicating with the public. Studies have looked at political campaigning through social media in the 2009 and 2014 European elections, elections in Scotland, the 2010 presidential elections in the United States and the 2014 general elections in India (Ahmed, Cho, & Jaidka, 2017;
Aragon, Karolin, Kaltenbrunner, Laniado, & Volkovich, 2013; Baxter & Marcella, 2012;
Burnap, Gibson, Sloan, Southern, & Williams, 2015; Conway, Kenski, & Wang, 2015;
Nulty, Theocharis, Popa, Parnet, & Benoit, 2016; Vergeer & Hermans, 2013). The political campaigning through social media is usually used for providing information, putting out a call for donations and recruitment of members and volunteers for the party (Baxter,
Marcella, & Varfis, 2011). The whole electoral campaign is broadcast on the social media accounts of political parties and their candidates to reiterate manifestoes and statements of candidates made during rallies and public debates (Ceron & d’Adda, 2016). This form of electronic communication tends to heighten especially just before the polling takes place (Aragon et al., 2013; Graham, Broersma, Hazelhoff, & Haar, 2013). The prevalence of online campaigning has even brought it at par with traditional forms of campaigning.
Literature suggests that online campaigning has become so prevalent that it is considered to be have similar functions as traditional forms of campaigning and in some cases has replaced traditional forms since it seems to have the same impact (Vergeer,
Hermans, & Sams, 2013).
As social media platforms are beginning to be a substitute for traditional campaigning, the information that parties and politicians circulate through the social media platforms
3 is crucial in many ways. The micro-blogging website Twitter has been a popular medium of disseminating this information. The literature on political communication and electoral studies comprises of studies analyzing tweets of political parties and candidates in elections in many ways. There have been studies focusing on the use of twitter by parties and politicians to look at the type of users (Vergeer, Hermans, & Sams, 2013), patterns of use, forecasting elections, patterns of interactions (Baxter & Marcella, 2012;
Baxter et al., 2011) and issues discussed (Abbey et al., 2011; Adams & McCorkindale,
2013; De Sio, De Angelis, & Emanuele, 2017).
However, the records of use of social media for political campaigning in developing countries are rather scant. In India, it was for the first time in the national elections of
2014 that Twitter was used as one of the means of political campaigning. What were the issues discussed by political parties? How did they make use of the platform? This study has tried to catch the first wave of social media campaigning on Twitter in India, which is most likely to be continued in the future, given the greater reach, time and cost- effectiveness of using Twitter to reach out to the voters.
This study uses the idea of ‘valence issues’, considered to be issues like health, defence, economic growth et cetera for which voters have a common preference. Hence, the outcome of interest becomes not necessarily whether voters agree on the stance taken by political parties, but, actually which party discusses these issues and delivers on them.
This study analyses the issues discussed by two major political parties in India—the
Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) on Twitter, before the
2014 general elections in India.
4 The use of Twitter has also been made to identify valence issues that had been popularized by Stokes (1963, 1992) comprised of issues on which there is widespread agreement such as law and order, defense, economic growth, employment (Bleck and
Walle, 2013). Valence issues assume importance because they indicate issues that the voters expect the political parties to deliver on, once they are in power. Following this, the study focuses on the Twitter feeds of two major political parties in India. With one of the prime interests of competing with opposing parties, Twitter has become a major mode of communication and campaigning for political parties during elections. It has been used for various purposes like fund-raising, calling for volunteers, publicizing the party manifesto, criticizing the other parties and engaging with the public during political campaigns (Adams & McCorkindale, 2013; Ahmed et al., 2016; Vergeer &
Hermans, 2013b; Vergeer et al., 2013).
1.1 Background
In the larger scheme of things, the use of Twitter, especially during elections is re- defining the agenda setting stage in policy process. According to research studies, even though traditional media affects most of the agenda online, the degree of effect has changed (McGregor & Vargo, 2017) and political tweets can become a part of the process of agenda-setting process (Parmelee, 2014). The theories related to spatial competition in politics by Downs (1957) and Stokes (1963) provide a useful theoretical framework to test in the case of the use of Twitter by political parties.
In this backdrop, the case of the general elections that took place in India, in 2014 is worthy of being studied because of many factors. It was the first time that social media was used in election campaigning in India and it was the longest election that ran in nine-
5 phases from April 7, 2014 to May 12, 2014. The results of this election were also very consequential since it was the first time in 30 years that a party (Bhartiya Janta Party) won the elections with an absolute majority in the country. The incumbent government was a coalition led by the Indian National Congress (INC). These two parties have been chosen for the study because they have been the two leading parties in India and have been the main contenders.
An interesting characteristic of online campaigning has been that this information flow is mainly uni-directional. There was very little evidence of two-way communication with the use of email/survey, polls, chats by parties, that are the usual tools of two-way communication. Studies on the use of social media platforms have found that there is no two-way information flow (Kanungo, 2015b). Baxter et al. (2011) have shown that political parties and candidates in the 2010 election in Scotland used websites and social media platforms only for one-way communication whereby they did not engage in discussions or debates with public for any policy issue. This was further substantiated by Baxter & Marcella (2012) when they found that candidates and parties in the 2012 election in Scotland used Twitter, Facebook and blogs only for a one-way flow of information.
This study has capitalized on the results on one-way communication of the political parties on Twitter and distinctive nature of this case to identify the valence issues that were discussed during elections. This paper uses the theory of valence politics and issue competition in elections and studies it in the context of social media usage by political parties. To execute this, the software R has been used for topic modeling of the tweets during election campaigning. This computer-assisted analysis makes the process
6 unbiased. It is also a useful tool to identify correlations between words that can indicate the significance of valence issues.
This study finds that in the case of the 2014 elections, the focus of issues discussed by
BJP and INC on Twitter was very different. The indication of discussion of valence issues by BJP based on the tweets is not very frequent, since Twitter was used more for party promotion and broadcasting events. Whereas for the INC, along with the announcements of events and rallies, Twitter was also used to discuss valence issues such as growth, health and education.
1.2 Significance of this Study
Election campaigns are of great significance to political parties, where they have a chance to put forward their agenda or the action plan and draw voters, especially in a mass democracy like India. The use of social media has been significant in the election campaigns in the developed nations. The 2008 Obama campaign in the U.S. that made use of Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information and mobilize voters (Nav,
Dimitrova, Shehata, Strömbäck, & Nord, 2014) was the first of its kind to use social media for election campaigning. Subsequently, election campaigning has had a powerful impact through Twitter in the developed countries. However, the role of Twitter in developing economics is not very clear – most of the studies done on analyzing the use of Twitter in elections have been for developed countries (Adams & McCorkindale, 2013; Baxter &
Marcella, 2012; Burnap et al., 2015; Nulty et al., 2016; Panagiotopoulos, 2012; Vergeer et al., 2013). Very few studies have looked into the political campaigning through Twitter in India (Ahmed, Cho, & Jaidka, 2017; Ahmed et al., 2016; Bajaj, 2017; Kanungo, 2015).
7 Twitter has been employed as a means of communication by political parties because the potential for communicating with a diverse population is much higher in case of Twitter since users can tap on to networks outside of their personal ones. Moreover, in India, the number of Twitter users is also increasing. In 2014, there were 15.8 million active
Twitter users and the numbers have shown an increasing trend since then to 30.4 million in 20181.
The study tries to fill the gap in the case of the nature use of Twitter in the 2014 Indian elections and contributes to the literature on Electoral Studies, Political Communication and Public Policy in so doing. The use of theoretical frameworks of Downs (1957) and
Stokes (1963) on valence politics provide an appropriate backdrop to study the issues discussed by political parties on Twitter.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a review of the literature on the use of Twitter in elections, valence issues and valence politics in elections. Section 3 elaborates on the research design of the paper, with the details on data collection and methodology of topic modeling. Section 4 presents the results on the use of tweets by the parties and the issues of valence discussed on Twitter. Section 5 concludes the paper by a discussion on how the study has attempted to fill gaps in literature and suggestions for future research.
1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/381832/twitter-users-india/, Retrieved on April 20,2018
8 2. Literature Review
2.1 Use of Twitter in elections
Twitter, the micro-blogging website that allows sending public messages of atmost 140 characters through the official account of a user has become quite popular among political parties and politicians, who set up a public profile, to communicate, advertise and publicize information during election campaigning and otherwise. This flow of information has created an additional effect on agenda-setting, which was previously confined to traditional media such as newspapers. As the dynamics of agenda-setting have become more complex, campaigning on traditional and social media also has interaction effects and campaigning on social media is seen as a new ‘avenue’ for influence. Conway et al. (2015) found that traditional media followed political candidates on certain issues and for other issues they tapped on to Twitter in the Presidential
Primary. For six out of seven issues considered (budget, economy, energy, foreign policy, healthcare and taxes), newspapers supposedly influence Twitter. McGregor & Vargo
(2017) carried out an analysis of the tweets of Twitter users during the 2012 Presidential elections in the U.S. and concluded that as active Twitter users communicate in an environment with similar users, it leads to a change in the importance of issues to match the partisan media.
Initial studies analyzing the use of Twitter during elections used a crude measure of number of tweets in the premise that more tweets would lead to more votes (Jungherr,
2016). However, this was insufficient and sentiment analysis was more compelling for research on the implications of using Twitter for politicians and political parties. In a systematic literature review of the use of Twitter in elections, Jungherr (2016) has
9 delineated the following topics that have been analyzed in studies on the use of Twitter by politicians and political parties: the type of parties that are more likely to use Twitter, the pattern of usage of Twitter by candidates and parties and the effects of their use of
Twitter. Usually, parties or candidates in opposition use Twitter more often than the incumbent or governing party (Vergeer & Hermans, 2013a).
2.2 Valence Issues
The concept of ‘valence issues’ is quite diverse and comprehensive. It can be applied to different fields such as Management and Psychology, and has a major impact on decision making in divergent scenarios. The term originated in Chemistry to denote the charge that an electron has to attract atoms to each other and in electoral studies, it is used to differentiate issues that all voters would support from other issues called ‘position issues’(Cox & Béland, 2013). Stokes (1963)defined position issues and valence issues while elaborating on the axiom of ordered dimensions to provide evidence that the
“space” in which American political parties grapple for electoral support is not a single ideological dimension. The position issues are those for which preferences of voters are defined and government advocates from a set of the alternatives of those preferences.
Valence issues, on the other hand are those that link parties to a condition with a negative or positive value that is placed by the electorate (Stokes, 1963). These issues can comprise of economic growth, managing services, reduction in crime that do not divide the parties and voters decide to vote for the candidate or party that can handle these issues most effectively (Cox & Béland, 2013; Green & Jennings, 2011).
Valence is used to study the attractiveness of an idea, which could change over time and this lends a dynamic characteristic to the concept. Cox and Beland (2013)suggest four
10 factors that change the valence of a policy idea and hence their influence on policy decisions. The first factor is time that emphasizes on the natural cycle of idea—in the initial stages when it is introduced and then with increasing familiarity, people start exploring policy options related to that idea and finally the idea either fades away or is carried forward according to the existing conditions. The second factor relates to timeliness of an idea that might lead to the opening of policy windows with new ideas to be implemented. The intensity of the attractiveness of an idea is the third factor that changes the valence of an idea. People tend to react emotionally to highly abstract ideas such as freedom or dignity as compared to less abstract ideas where they reason before responding to ideas. The existence of a policy entrepreneur is also another factor in defining and putting forward legitimate ideas.
The literature on valence issues emphasizes different outcomes. Much of the literature that looks at valence issues in elections focuses on the justification of election results (M.
Clarke, 2009; Johns, Mitchell, Denver, & Pattie, 2009). Since valence has different connotations, valence can also be used to look at the candidate’s competence or an inherent candidate attributes, for instance in the case of presidential elections in the U.S.,
Adams & McCorkindale (2013) have commented on the transparency in tweets of candidates (whether they tweets or the team drafts tweets for them) and the content of their tweets. However, this study does not delve into the characteristic interpretation of valence.
The perspectives of both positional and valence issues can be used to identify issue attention or issue competition in electoral campaigns. In the case of positional theories, parties take different positions in order to maximize electoral share, followed from
11 spatial model of party competition. Whereas, in the case of valence and salience theories,
Stokes (1963) has argued that political parties try to catch attention of voters on issues which are most suitable for them.
2.3 Valence Politics in Elections
The basis of valence lies in the theory of issue competition between political parties. In formulating the economic theory for political action in a democracy, Downs (1957) started with the central hypothesis that the social function of political parties is to frame and carry out policies. As a secondary motive, they do this only to garner votes form the public. Their primary motive is having power and prestige of the office they will hold when they win elections. From the point of view of voters, they would vote for the party that changes the utility they derive form the actions of the government during elections and the alternatives advanced by the opposing party. Hence, to maximize their votes, they take into account these factors.
Downs adapted Harold Hotelling’s spatial model of market2 in the context of elections, with the main assumptions being single-peaked preferences of voters and the arrangement of political parties on a continuum from left to right based on their ideologies in a two-party and multi-party case. The political parties can move either left or right, but in the case of a two-party system, their movement towards the other party would make them lose the extremist voters at the end of the scale for whom there wouldn’t be a significant difference between choices. In a simplistic two-party model in a democracy, the distribution of voters resembles a normal curve, and the position of the
2 Hotelling’s spatial model envisaged that two firms selling uniform products in a linear market would locate side by side to capture each half of the market.
12 two parties are similar. This was generalized to a multi-party system where the conditions become exactly the opposite, and parties stick to an ideology emphasizing their differences from the others.
However, Stokes (1963) took this model a step ahead by calling into question the axioms of uni-dimensionality, stability of structure and ordered dimensions. Stokes (1963) concluded that it is not that the position issues are of salience during elections. The valence issues or those for which there is a strong consensus between politicians and the public are a more important part of the agenda. These usually For issues concerning economy, health, crime, voters are more concerned about ‘How to resolve issues?’ and
‘Who can do it?’ (H. Clarke, Reifler, Scotto, Stewart, & Whiteley, 2015). As a first step, it is imperative to identify the issues that political parties discuss. This is available through reports and manifestoes from the political parties (Eder, Jenny, & Müller, 2017).
3. Framework and Research Design
3.1 Case Selection
In the governance structure like that of India, elections are a crucial instrument for democracy. India’s bicameral parliament consists of a Lower House (Lok Sabha or House of the People) and an Upper House (Rajya Sabha or Council of States). The Lower House consists of representatives of the people, who are chosen directly in the constituencies.
The seats for the Lower house among states are divided according to the population of the states such that there is higher representation of members with a larger population3.
3 http://loksabha.nic.in/
13 The Central Government elections to elect the members of the parliament of Lower
House take place every five years, with the last one being held in 2014.
The case of 2014 elections in India is an interesting case for many reasons. This was the first time when social media was employed for campaigning in the Indian elections to attract voters, mobilize donations for parties, calling out people to volunteer and raise issues on popular social media like Twitter and Facebook (Kanungo, 2015). The use of social media, especially Twitter, during the election campaigning in countries such as the
U.S., countries in Europe, and their impact on voter behaviour has been well documented in literature (Baxter & Marcella, 2012; Baxter et al., 2011; Grant, Moon, & Grant, 2010;
LaMarre & Suzuki-Lambrecht, 2013; Panagiotopoulos, 2012; Vergeer & Hermans,
2013a). However, there is paucity of studies on the use of Twitter by political parties and politicians during elections in India.
This was one of the longest elections in the history of India, with records available of the campaigning on Twitter and otherwise. The elections took place in nine-phases in the country from April 7, 2014 to May 12, 2014. In the 543 constituencies of India, 6 national parties participated through their representatives with 458 other state parties and unrecognized parties4. The Bhartiya Janta party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress
(INC) have been the two major parties in India that had the highest share of seats in all elections till now.
In the 2014 General elections, there was a massive voter turnout of 66.4 percent, the highest ever in any election in India(Ahmed et al., 2016). This background, coupled with
4 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=105127
14 the result of these elections when for the first time in 30 years a political party had won majority of the seats in the Lower House makes this case extreme and crucial, and fulfills the criteria of case selection according to Seawright & Gerring (2014). Further, this case is novel because of the use of social media for the first time and sets the tone for its use during elections and otherwise in the future5.
3.2 Research Question and Hypothesis
The nature of competition between political parties has evolved over the years and especially with new mediums of communication and social media, case in point being
Twitter (De Sio et al., 2017). Political parties are interested in getting voted, for which they campaign on different forms of media, and also publish a manifesto outlining their agenda.
The Manifestos of the political parties play an important role in projecting their vision and in party competition (Eder, Jenny, & Müller, 2017). The INC announced their manifesto on 26th March 2014 and the BJP released their manifesto for the 2014 elections on 7th April 2014. Narendra Modi was the Prime-ministerial candidate from BJP and
Rahul Gandhi was the candidate from INC. The manifestos clearly defined the priorities of the parties and their vision for India.
To gather more information about the focus on issues by the two political parties, the
Manifestos6 were also studied to identify valence issues that were discussed on Twitter.
5 The next General elections in India will take place in 2019. 6 ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ (https://www.bjp.org/images/pdf_2014/full_manifesto_english_07.04.2014.pdf ) was
15 The Election Manifesto of the BJP was a detailed document of their priorities on solving problems plaguing the country, The Lok Sabha Election Manifesto 2014 of the INC had a
15-point agenda for ‘Socio-economic and political transformation of India’. It spanned issues across economic growth, health, housing, controlling inflation, women empowerment, implementing a National Youth Policy and modernization of defence.
These were the issues that were revealed in the public opinion polls and in addition, corruption was a contentious issue7.
Based on this, the nature of campaigning of the opposing parties would differ, and the issues that they want to bring in the forefront. This would lead to a difference in party behaviour and competition on varied issues. Ultimately, parties strategically choose topics that they think would work (De Sio et al., 2017). Most studies on Twitter have pointed towards one-way communication from politicians and political parties, hence, this study investigates the Twitter feed of political parties and not the two-way communication in the form of comments from the followers of the parties on Twitter.
Valence politics leads to political parties either parties positioning themselves similarly or distinguishing themselves based on their ideologies. Bearing this in mind, the research question for this study is to identify what the valence issues are discussed by BJP and INC for political campaigning in the 2014 elections. The hypothesis evolving from issue competition and valence politics is that in a two-party case, the issues of both political parties discussed over Twitter would be similar.
the Election Manifesto 2014 for the BJP and ‘Your Voice Our Pledge’ (https://www.inc.in/en/media/manifesto-2014 )was the Manifesto for INC in 2014. 7 First Post, ‘Corruption is key issue for Indians in elections 2014: Gallup poll
16 3.3 Data
The data for this study comprised of twitter feeds form the official accounts of the BJP and INC—@BJP4India and @INCIndia. Jungherr (2016) has identified the two main approaches of data collection in studies on election campaigns on Twitter as: 1)
Streaming data from Twitter’s API (Application Programming Interface) or 2) Scraping the Twitter website by using third-party software’s. The use of Twitter’s API has some limitations such as the limit on downloading Twitter feeds—streaming of data for more than 3 years in the past is difficult. For this study, the tweets were first searched on
Twitter by using the ‘Twitter advanced search’ option for the relevant dates. From the
Twitter webpages of the official accounts, the twitter feeds were then scraped using the software ‘Data Miner’. This helped in downloading information on the date of the tweet, the tweet, likes, comments and retweets for the tweets. For the ease of analysis and interpretation, only tweets in English were included in the dataset. Tweets that were not in English (and were in Hindi) accounted for less than 25 percent of the total for both official accounts, and hence were removed.
A simple plot of the number of tweets of both parties in the year 2014 shows a surge in the beginning of the election year for BJP and a slight increase for INC, and a significant drop June onwards. This is just an indication of the heightened activity of the political parties before elections.
17 Figure 1: Number of tweets of BJP and INC from the official accounts in 2014
Number of tweets on officials twitter accounts of INC and BJP in 2014 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0
INCIndia BJP4India
Source: Based on tweets collected from Twitter
Deciding on the timing of the start of a political campaign is problematic. Brady, Johnston,
& Sides (2006) give an insight into political campaigning and concur that it is difficult to arrive at the timing of the start of a political campaign. For the purpose of this study, it was decided that the tweets from March 1, 2014 would be selected since polling schedule was announced by the Election Commissioner of India on March 5, 2014. The elections ended on May 12, 2014, the results were declared on May 16, 2014 and the formation of the new government was complete on May 31, 2014. Hence, the tweets from the official accounts have been used for this particular time period.
A visual inspection of data shows that even though the number of tweets put out in the
BJP official account are much larger than INC, most of them are replies to tweets of followers to show gratitude with the words: ‘A Heart felt thank you for your generous contribution towards Mission 272+’. Due to the inundation of tweets via such messages on the BJP account, the data is sorted on the basis of re-tweets, because a lot of the tweets
18 were direct tweets thanking Twitter users for donations or for volunteering. This was done because re-tweets are also an indication of the popular posts according to the other users on Twitter (Yang & Rim, 2014). However, since all re-tweets do not provide meaningful information, tweets with less than 10 retweets were deleted from the dataset. This was done keeping in view that for less than 10 retweets, the tweets were thank you messages for individual followers. The sorting helped to sift data and narrowing down on the more substantial tweets of interest for this study, which discuss valence issues and promotional messages for election campaigning. After the sorting,
INCIndia account had 1874 tweets and BJP4India account had 328 tweets. This is a surprising statistic given that just by looking at the number of tweets, the tweets in the
BJP account surpassed that on the INC official account for most of the year (Figure 1).
Figure 2: Number of tweets with more than 10 re-tweets for the BJP and INC official
Twitter accounts (March 2014 to May 2014)
Number of tweets with more than 10 retweets (March 2014-May 2014) 1000 800 600 400 BJP 200 INC
than 10 retweets 10than 0 March April May
Number of tweets tweets withmore Number of Months
Source: Based on data on tweets collected from Twitter
19 3.4 Methodology
In order to analyze contents of the Twitter feeds of BJP and INC during their campaigning, this study has used the software R (R Core Team 2018) for computer-assisted analysis.
This provides results that are unbiased, as compared to other studies using manual coding of tweets that are subject to the decision-making and interpretation of the coders.
To identify the issues being discussed, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling is a popular technique in political communication literature to find a set of topics from a collection of documents(Jacobi, n.d.). LDA topic modeling is used to identify topics within documents using a group of words and is supposed to be a powerful tool to identify topics in tweets (Hong & Davison, 2010). Topic modeling helps identify the hidden or ‘latent’ patterns of words in documents and groups them according to It uses a ‘bag of words’ approach whereby words are identified and grouped together whenever they co- occurred. The following re-iterative process generates the topics from documents (Hong
& Davison, 2010): A topic is picked from the distribution of topics in the documents, a sample of a word related to that topic is chosen from a distribution and this process is repeated. The term ‘Dirichlet’ is related to the multivariate probability distribution from which the topics in the documents and the words are drawn.
The topics identified are indicative of the content of the tweets by the political parties.
To identify specific valence issues, R identifies word associations for valence issues identified from the manifestos of the parties and public opinion during elections. A score of 1 indicates that the two words always appear together and a score close to 0 means the words hardly appear together.
20 However, LDA topic modeling has many drawbacks for unconventional datasets such as tweets since the ‘documents’ in question are too short for topics (Tang, Meng, Nguyen,
Mei, & Zhang, 2014). Another one of them is that is that the positive or negative tone of words is not reported, which might lead to misinterpretations. Since the LDA topic modeling uses a ‘bag of words’ approach, the separation of words could lead to different interpretations if two words are used together in certain cases. However, the technique is still used in textual analysis of tweets and can be effectively used to extract discussion topics (Sokolova et al, 2016).
To start with, the frequency of words in the tweets of both parties was checked by means of word cloud. Then, topic modeling was carried out in R to extract the top five topics of discussion on Twitter by the political parties. After identifying the topics, based on the manifestoes of the parties, word associations were found for selected valence issues.
4. Results and Analysis
The sorting of data and the resultant fall in the number of tweets for BJP point towards the fact that BJP used this social media to thank the users for their support and contribution, whereas INC might have used Twitter to broadcast political events, put forward views and project their priorities. This is consistent with the finding of Ahmed et al. (2016) that BJP consistently used phrases of ‘thank you’ as messages to the users for contributing to work and through funds. For both BJP and INC, a bulk of the tweets were for broadcasting their rallies, visits of politicians to different states and promoting their manifesto. The analysis below confirms this.
21 4.1 Word cloud
The frequent terms have been represented in the word clouds for the twitter feeds from official accounts of BJP4India and INCIndia. They provide a view of the prominent words that are visible in the tweets of the political parties more frequently.
Figure 3: Frequent words used in tweets of BJP
Source: Word cloud generated on R
The word cloud generated for BJP indicates the use of the name of Narendra Modi, since he was the Prime Ministerial candidate for the party, and it is apparent that most tweets focus on the statements made by him in rallies. The presence of phrases such as
‘httpdonatebjporg8’, ‘httpyuva4indiatv9’ indicate the use of media to call for donations and include the youth. The words ‘3d’, ‘technology’ refer to the use of technology in the
8 Link to the website where donations could be made for the party 9 Link to the website where videos on opinions of the youth (yuva) in the form of interviews were posted
22 political campaigning, especially the hologram used in which Modi appeared live in 3D in rallies across India at once (Jaffrelot, 2015). There were audios available on the telephone number 02245014501 to listen to the speeches by Narendra Modi. The phases such as ‘defeat congress’ indicate the use of tweets against the opposing party. The tweets on the official Twitter page of BJP also mentioned other ministers from the party such as ‘nsitharaman’, rajnathsingh’, ‘arunjaitley’.
The frequency of terms does not throw much light on the valence issues discussed by BJP on Twitter during political campaigning. The use of Twitter by BJP seems to be more for announcements of rallies, promotion of the party, call for volunteers and donations.
Figure 4: Frequent words used in tweets of INC
Source: Word cloud generated on R
23
The word cloud for INC is different from that of BJP in terms of the frequency of words
(due to higher number of tweets in the dataset) and the diversity in the nature of Tweets.
Rahul Gandhi was the Prime-ministerial candidate from INC and he addressed people in different parts of the country. The words like ‘education’, ‘growth’, ‘jobs’, ‘poverty’,
‘health’ point towards the valence issues discussed frequently. The party also emphasized on issues such as women empowerment and fighting corruption.
Few similarities with the BJP word cloud are the terms/link to websites such as
‘httpincindiajoinus’ and ‘httpwwwincin’ that again are related to online promotion and call for the youth to join the party.
4.2 Topic Modeling
In order to gain clarity on the valence issues, topic modeling on R provided topics on the basis of the tweets for the Twitter accounts BJP4India and INCIndia.
Table 1: Topics for @BJP4India
Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 1 audio india rally httpyuva4indiatv shri
2 2014 vote live bjp narendramodi
3 time change Bharat the 2245014501 (India) 4 congress address Vijay modi address (Victory) 5 today your people govt candidates
6 technology contribute addressing party bjprajnathsingh
The topics for the tweets of BJP seem to concentrate on issues related to the use of technology for addressing the public in rallies, calling out to people to vote and
24 contribute to party activities or donate funds (Topic 1 and 2). The inclusion of ‘congress’ in topic 1 points towards the criticism of the INC since it was a major opposing party.
Topic 3 relates to the rallies addressed by Narendra Modi that were broadcast live to people and the frequent use of India and victory for BJP in the elections by the speaker.
Topic 4 relates to the emphasis on including the opinions of the youth in the party agenda. Topic 5 throws light on the various means by which the public could listen to the speeches of the BJP candidates that includes a telephone number for live speeches of the politicians of BJP.
Table 2: Topics for INCIndia
Topic 1 Topic 2 Topic 3 Topic 4 Topic 5 1 Rahulgandhi smtsoniagandhi live people Rahulgandhi
2 publicrally women httpwwwincin Rahulg and his read public rally 3 india amethi watchlive bjp right
4 country work youngindia gujarat fight
5 Rahulgandhi congresscandidates rgspeakstoetv liveathttpwwwincin going interacting 6 congress aamcharahul10 peoplegathered listen want
The resultant topics from topic modeling on the tweets of INCIndia are concentrated on the appearances of Rahul Gandhi at TV interviews (‘rgspeakstoetv’) and to address people at public rallies. Topic 2 relates to the focus of the INC and the President ‘Sonia
Gandhi’ on women empowerment which was a recurrent theme in the rallies and the visits, especially to constituency ‘Amethi’.
10 This translates to ‘Our Rahul’ and was a frequent hashtag in the tweets of INCIndia.
25 The topics have given an insight into the content of the tweets of both the parties, however, they do not provide clarity on the valence issues discussed on Twitter by the political parties. Hence, word associations with particular valence topics such as growth, health, education, inflation have been calculated to determine in what way do the parties tweet about these.
4.3 Word Associations
The word associations provide correlations between specific words that occur together frequently. This section investigates the word associations and tries to interpret the correlations.
Table 3: Word Associations of Valence issues for INC and BJP
Valence Correlation BJP INC Issues coefficient Growth 1 real, created less than 1 and greater time than 0.7 less than 0.7 and visit, jobs glad, great detail, job creation, many greater than 0.4 dimensions, my congress manifesto spells less than 0.4 and poverty we believe, weve helped pull grater than 0.2 millions, creates new jobs, peaceful decade, social inclusion for building India like never, read httpincincampaigntraildetail 103growth under upa over four times faster than during nda, lets move forward together, congress welfare agenda, detrimental, perception, agpbjp govet came, four times faster, Inflation 1 are, aware, callwhatsapp, fact,httpwwwbjpor gvoteforindiainflati on Health Less than 1 and malnourishment ever provide, will, give greater than 0.3 right, poor get free medicines rahul gandhi, life expectancy, NHRM, central govt spends 8000 crore Education Less than 1 and we must continue, education act, helped greater than 0.3 increase female literacy, our right, legal right, employable jobs, private sector, india rg for education, requires skills, children upto 14 years has, given free right Source: Based on results from R
26
The word associations of valence issues for INC are more than that for BJP. This indicates that the tweets of INC incorporated valence issues more than that of BJP. The highest correlation of words for both parties is with ‘growth’. The word associations with growth for BJP are limited to jobs and the idea that BJP will be able to create growth. However, this is visible only in one tweet (and therefore the correlation is 1).
For INC, in the tweets related to growth, the information provided focuses on job creation, the efforts of INC to pull people out of poverty while the party held the office and growth being four times higher than the previous rule of the NDA 11 (National
Democratic Alliance).
BJP tweets made no mention of the issues related to health and education in their political campaigning. The INC tweets discuss health by promoting the National Rural
Health Mission (NHRM) and the promise by Rahul Gandhi to provide free medicines to the poor. With regard to education, INC proposed free right to education for children upto 14 years of age and considered it a legal right so that people can be employed.
5. Conclusion
The use of Twitter for political campaigning has been very dynamic and would differ on the context or country in question. For a democracy like India where it was used for the first time, the use seemed like an experiment. This study has utilized the scenario to gain insights on the use and discussion of valence issues by political parties. The goal of this
11 The NDA was a coalition led by the BJP before the UPA, a coalition of parties led by the INC came to power
27 study was to identify ‘what’ were the valence issues discussed on Twitter. For the ‘how’ question, research can be undertaken on networks formed on Twitter and engagement of political parties with the users, and the use of Twitter in the 2019 elections would provide a comparable setting.
According to research, political candidates and campaigns are still struggling to capitalize on the social media given the nature of one-sided communication and dissimilar levels of activity (Aparaschivei, 2011; Conway et al., 2013; Golbeck et al., 2010;
Graham et al., 2013; Klinger, 2013; Stromer-Galley, 2014). This would have disparate effects on agenda setting, since it is not yet clear whether traditional media sets the agenda or the upcoming use of social media. However, given the characteristics of
Twitter such as the ease in communicating, the wide reach and faster spread of information.
Keeping in view the spectrum of hard or soft issues, valence or position issues; on ground, policy issues tend to cover very different realities Guinaudeau & Persico (2014).
In the case of 2014 General elections, BJP chose to focus more on announcements and promotions rather than publishing tweets on issues of valence. The valence issues identified from the tweets of both the parties were concentrated around growth, health, education and price rise. Even though these issues were prominent in the manifestos of both the parties, BJP chose to report these on Twitter via links to website and INC chose to explicitly tweet about them.
This study has tried to model the use of Twitter by two major political parties in a mass democracy for campaigning in the elections. This would be a contribution to the studies
28 analyzing the use of Twitter by political parties in developing countries. The future research would take into account other forms of media through which political candidates and parties communicate and delve into inter-media agenda-setting effects.
Further, the uni-directional communication premise on Twitter can be tested by including comments from the users in the dataset and examine the engagement of politicians and political parties with Twitter users. The latest general elections of 2019 in India would also provide a good ground for comparison of the political campaigning of political parties before elections.
29 REFERENCES
Abbey, R., Adams, J., Clark, M., Easton, M., Ezrow, L., Kosmidis, S., & Neundorf, A. (2011).
When does valence matter? Heightened valence effects for governing parties
during election campaigns. Party Politics, 19(1), 61–82.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068810395057
Adams, A., & McCorkindale, T. (2013). Dialogue and transparency: A content analysis of
how the 2012 presidential candidates used twitter. Public Relations Review,
39(2013), 357–359. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.016
Ahmed, S., Cho, J., & Jaidka, K. (2017). Leveling the playing field: The use of Twitter by
politicians during the 2014 Indian general election campaign. Telematics and
Informatics, 34(7), 1377–1386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2017.09.005
Ahmed, S., Jaidka, K., & Cho, J. (2016). The 2014 Indian elections on Twitter: A
comparison of campaign strategies of political parties. Telematics and
Informatics, 33(4), 1071–1087. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.03.002
Aragon, P., Karolin, E. K., Kaltenbrunner, A., Laniado, D., & Volkovich, Y. (2013).
Communication dynamics in twitter during political campaigns: The case of the
2011 Spanish national election. Policy & Internet. Retrieved from
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1944-2866.POI327
Bajaj, S. G. (2017). The Use of Twitter during the 2014 Indian General Elections:
Framing, Agenda-Setting, and the Personalization of Politics. Asian Survey, 57(2),
249–270. https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2017.57.2.249
Baxter, G., & Marcella, R. (2012). Does Scotland ‘like’ This? Social Media Use by Political
Parties and Candidates in Scotland during the 2010 UK General Election
Campaign. Libri, 62(2). https://doi.org/10.1515/libri-2012-0008
30 Baxter, G., Marcella, R., & Varfis, E. (2011). The use of the internet by political parties
and candidates in Scotland during the 2010 UK general election campaign. Aslib
Proceedings, 63(5), 464–483. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012531111164969
Bleck, J., & Van de Walle, N. (2013). Valence issues in African elections: Navigating uncertainty and the weight of the past. Comparative Political Studies, 46(11), 1394-1421.
Brady, H. E., Johnston, R., & Sides, J. (2006). The Study of Political Campaigns. In
Capturing Campaign Effects (p. 26).
Burnap, P., Gibson, R. K., Sloan, L., Southern, R., & Williams, M. L. (2015). 140 Characters
to Victory?: Using Twitter to Predict the UK 2015 General Election. SSRN
Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2603433
Ceron, A., & d’Adda, G. (2016). E-campaigning on Twitter: The effectiveness of
distributive promises and negative campaign in the 2013 Italian election. New
Media & Society, 18(9), 1935–1955.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815571915
Clarke, H., Reifler, J., Scotto, T. J., Stewart, M. C., & Whiteley, P. (2015). Valence politics
and voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Electoral Studies, 40, 462–470.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2014.09.011
Clarke, M. (2009). Valence and electoral outcomes in Western Europe, 1976–1998.
Electoral Studies, 28(2009), 111–122.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2008.07.009
Clarke, H., Sanders, D., Stewart, M., & Whiteley, P. (2011). Valence politics and electoral choice in Britain, 2010. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 21(2), 237-253.
Conway, B. A., Kenski, K., & Wang, D. (2015). The Rise of Twitter in the Political
Campaign: Searching for Intermedia Agenda-Setting Effects in the Presidential
Primary, 18.
31 Cox, H. R., & Béland, D. (2013). Valence, Policy Ideas, and the Rise of Sustainability.
Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions,
26, 307–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12003
De Sio, L., De Angelis, A., & Emanuele, V. (2017). Issue Yield and Party Strategy in
Multiparty Competition. Comparative Political Studies, 001041401773008.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414017730082
Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. The Journal
of Political Economy, 65(2), 135–150.
Eder, N., Jenny, M., & Müller, W. C. (2017). Manifesto functions: How party candidates
view and use their party’s central policy document. Electoral Studies, 45, 75–87.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.11.011
Graham, T., Broersma, M., Hazelhoff, K., & Haar, G. van ’t. (2013). Between Broadcasting
Political Messages and Interacting with Voters. Information, Communication &
Society, 16(5), 692–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.785581
Grant, W. J., Moon, B., & Grant, J. B. (2010). Digital Dialogue? Australian Politicians’ use
of the Social Network Tool Twitter. Australian Journal of Political Science, 45:4,
579–604. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2010.517176
Guinaudeau, I., & Persico, S. (2014). What is Issue Competition? Conflict, Consensus and
Issue Ownership in Party Competition. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and
Parties, 24(3), 312–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2013.858344
Hong, L., & Davison, B. D. (2010). Empirical study of topic modeling in Twitter (pp. 80–
88). ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/1964858.1964870
Jacobi, C. (n.d.). Wouter van Atteveldt and Kasper Welbers, 15.
32 Jaffrelot, C. (2015). The Modi-centric BJP 2014 election campaign: new techniques and
old tactics. Contemporary South Asia, 23(2), 151–166.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2015.1027662
Johns, R., Mitchell, J., Denver, D., & Pattie, C. (2009). Valence Politics in Scotland:
Towards an Explanation of the 2007 Election. Political Studies, 57, 207–233.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00762.x
Jungherr, A. (2016). Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 13(1), 72–91.
https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2015.1132401
Kanungo, N. T. (2015a). India’s Digital Poll Battle: Political Parties and Social Media in
the 16th Lok Sabha Elections. Studies in Indian Politics, 3(2), 212–228.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023015601743
Kanungo, N. T. (2015b). India’s Digital Poll Battle: Political Parties and Social Media in
the 16th Lok Sabha Elections. Studies in Indian Politics, 3(2), 212–228.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023015601743
LaMarre, H. L., & Suzuki-Lambrecht, Y. (2013). Tweeting democracy? Examining
Twitter as an online public relations strategy for congressional campaigns’.
Public Relations Review, 39(4), 360–368.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.009
McGregor, S. C., & Vargo, C. J. (2017). Election-related talk and agenda-setting effects on
Twitter: A big data analysis of salience transfer at different levels of user
participation. The Agenda Setting Journal, 1(1), 44–62.
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.1.1.05mcg
33 Nav, S. C., Dimitrova, D. V., Shehata, A., Strömbäck, J., & Nord, L. W. (2014). Participation
in Election Campaigns: Evidence From Panel Data. Communication Research,
41(1).
Nulty, P., Theocharis, Y., Popa, S. A., Parnet, O., & Benoit, K. (2016). Social media and
political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament.
Electoral Studies, 44, 429–444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.04.014
Panagiotopoulos, P. (2012). AN OVERVIEW STUDY OF TWITTER IN THE UK LOCAL
GOVERNMENT, 13.
Parmelee, J. H. (2014). The agenda-building function of political tweets. New Media &
Society, 16(3), 434–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487955
R Development Core Team (2008). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-
0, URL http://www.R-project.org.
Seawright, J., Gerring, J., Seawright, J., & Gerring, J. (2014). Case Selection Techniques in
Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options. In M.
Tight, Case Studies (pp. II213–II213). 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y
1SP United Kingdom: SAGE Publications Ltd.
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473915480.n31
Sokolova, M., Huang, K., Matwin, S., Ramisch, J., Sazonova, V., Black, R., ... & Sambuli, N. (2016). Topic Modelling and Event Identification from Twitter Textual Data. arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.02519.
Stokes, D. E. (1963). Spatial Models of Party Competition. American Political Science
Review, 57, 368–377.
Tang, J., Meng, Z., Nguyen, X., Mei, Q., & Zhang, M. (2014). Understanding the Limiting
Factors of Topic Modeling via Posterior Contraction Analysis. Proceedings of the
34 31 St International Conference on Machine Learning, Beijing, China, 2014. JMLR:
W&CP Volume 32, 9.
Vergeer, M., & Hermans, L. (2013). Campaigning on Twitter: Microblogging and Online
Social Networking as Campaign Tools in the 2010 General Elections in the
Netherlands. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(4), 399–419.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12023
Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Sams, S. (2013). Online social networks and micro-blogging
in political campaigning: The exploration of a new campaign tool and a new
campaign style. Party Politics, 19(3), 477–501.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068811407580
Yang, M. C., & Rim, H. C. (2014). Identifying interesting Twitter contents using topical
analysis. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(9), 4330–4336.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2013.12.051
35