Having followed both PM Narendra Modi and CM Arvind Kejriwal on twitter for a while, I noticed a distinct pattern to the way they each of them tweets. To confirm my impressions, I did a detailed analysis of their tweets over 50 days (1 Apr to 20 May 2016) and tried to broadly group them into different categories. For ease of comparison, I tried to make the categories as similar as possible.
Wherever this was not possible, I tried to group them into bigger categories which would be common (For example – Governance affairs). And since the volume of tweets over the fixed period were also substantially different – the PM tweeted almost twice as much as the CM of Delhi – I converted the number to percentage for comparison.
The resulting compilation threw up some very interesting data points which give a great insight into the thought process and leadership styles of the two leaders. It also gives a fair idea about what they’re preoccupied with. The detailed comparison is as per the table below, followed by some observations I have had.
Observations based on this limited, 50-day study:
1. The highest percentage of tweets by Arvind Kejriwal are ones attacking / criticizing others (44%), and by Narendra Modi are about government business (50%). Therefore, the former spends far more time in attacking others while the latter spends more time talking about his work.
2. Both devote almost an equal proportion of their tweets to compliments. However, the PM’s complimentary tweets are more varied, and include festival greetings for almost all denominations of the country. Three of Arvind Kejriwal’s tweets are self-congratulatory.
3. Just 27% of Arvind Kejriwal’s tweets are about his government’s activities, as compared to 50% by the PM. Apart from attacking others, he also tweets about affairs of other states. Some of his tweets are also offered as explanations / self-defence to criticism. While the PM also faces quite a lot of criticism, this is not reflected in his tweets.
Conclusions
While the readers are invited to draw their own conclusions after studying their data, my takeaway from this is that Arvind Kejriwal should spend less time in attacking other people, and focus more on the governance of Delhi for which he has been elected.
