Gujarat gets nearly 2 million Twitter mentions, Modi figures most

The 2017 Gujarat state elections saw nearly two million mentions on Twitter, the social network says. It measured the activity on the hashtag #GujaratElection2017 between December 1 and 18 and found that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the top mentioned political figure, chief minister Vijay Rupani was the most mentioned election candidate, and "development" the top conversation topic.

As the two political parties slugged it out online, BJP (@BJP4India) accounted for 38% mentions while Congress (@INCIndia) garnered 42% of conversations. The local units of both parties chipped in as well: BJP's Gujarat unit picked up 15% mentions as opposed to 5% for Congress' Gujarat unit.

After Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi was the second most-mentioned political figure, followed by BJP president Amit Shah, Patidar Anamat Aandolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel, and Congress politician Ahmed Patel. Rupani's effortless win from his Rajkot west seat got him to the top of the most discussed candidates list. First-time contestant and young Dalit politico Jignesh Mevani came second while Congress OBC politician Alpesh Thakore finished third.

Mewani, who won from Vadgam, notched up a 252% increase in followers in three months, going from 11,815 followers in September to over 41,000 currently. Thakore's follower count went up 228% in the same period.

After development, "religion and Hindutva" was the most mentioned conversation topic. Other subjects that came in for discussion were the Goods and Services Tax, the city of Surat, demonetisation, and the Patidar stir that made the community the most sought after by those contesting.

While these topics and mentions were measured on the #GujaratElections2017 hashtag, other tags that saw the most posts were #GujaratVerdict, #Gujarat, #ExitPoll, #GujaratElection. The two and a half weeks of December saw over 1.9 million mentions in relation to the Gujarat elections, Twitter India said in a release on Tuesday.

India wasn't the only country tweeting about the elections in Gujarat. According to a "heatmap" of the Gujarat elections tweets released by Twitter, there were significant spurts of activity on the topic in southern Australia, east coast of the US, and in the UK in addition to south-east Asia.

News Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com