1 Leader or Party? Personalization in Twitter Political Campaigns 59 2 60 3 during the 2019 Indian Elections 61 4 62 5 Ashwin Rajadesingan∗ Anmol Panda Joyojeet Pal 63 6 64 7
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] 65 8 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Microsoft Research, India Microsoft Research, India 66 9 67 ABSTRACT structured and managed, since social media becomes a site where 10 68 the politician’s image is constructed, and the channel which then 11 Personality-centric politics has been a significant part of discus- 69 propagates out to traditional media such as print and television 12 sions on social media’s impact on electoral politics. In this study, 70 [11]. 13 we quantified personalization in mainstream politics by studying 71 The election of populist leaders with a heavy social media foot- 14 the extent to which parliamentary candidates referred to the key 72 print such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, and 15 leader of their party as opposed to the party itself in their Twitter 73 Narendra Modi have brought to fore the role of personalized cam- 16 political campaigns. We found that the candidates of the incumbent 74 paigns, where the central focus of political outreach is on the indi- 17 right-wing Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, led by a popular and 75 vidual rather than the parties to which they belong [40]. Although 18 widely approved leader, Narendra Modi, were significantly more 76 personalization through social media is a relatively recent devel- 19 likely to run a leader-centric campaign than the candidates of the 77 opment, personalization itself is neither novel nor unique; Over 20 main opposition party, the INC.