T13P05 Session 1 Title of the Paper What Do Political Parties in India
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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 [email protected] 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 PLEASE DO NOT CITE. 1 Abstract The use of social media for political campaigning during elections by political parties has been very prevalent in the developed nations.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.