Amidst the barrage of misinformation and brouhaha created by the Opposition over the various agriculture Bills passed in the Upper House, PM Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle witnessed the biggest single day engagement on September 20 (the day the Bills were passed in the Rajya Sabha), which has been a record.
This number, which is published by a platform named Twitteet, has been confirmed to be the highest engagement for a single day by any twitter profile in India for the month of September 2020.
The next highest Twitter engagement on September 20 was that of senior Congress senior leader Rahul Gandhi which was around 20% of what PM Narendra Modi could register.
Most of PM Modi’s tweets on September 20 revolved around the agriculture Bills, which he has called the need of 21st century India.
मैं पहले भी कहा चुका हूं और एक बार फिर कहता हूं:
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 20, 2020
MSP की व्यवस्था जारी रहेगी।
सरकारी खरीद जारी रहेगी।
हम यहां अपने किसानों की सेवा के लिए हैं। हम अन्नदाताओं की सहायता के लिए हरसंभव प्रयास करेंगे और उनकी आने वाली पीढ़ियों के लिए बेहतर जीवन सुनिश्चित करेंगे।
The tweet wherein PM Modi put the facts on record that the MSP (minimum support price) for agriculture produce will not be discontinued and that government will continue to purchase from farmers got the highest traction.
This tweet of PM Modi was in response to the misinformation spread by senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who had cast aspersions on the government doing away with the MSP.
Record breaking engagement for PM Modi’s tweet
Sandeep Amar, co-founder of www.twitteet.com, the analytics platform representing ratings, rankings and curated feeds based on Twitter engagements while speaking to OpIndia said, “PM Modi’s twitter handle crossing half a million engagements is the first time our algorithm has registered this kind of engagement in India for a single day. It’s a single-day record, for the month of September 2020.”
The platform captures Twitter engagement data for politicians, journalists, sportsperson, Bollywood, Businessmen and other celebs, and reports a ranking on a daily basis.
Normally one would expect that PM Modi’s handle will have most engagement on his birthday, which was a day earlier. However, the fact that his handle registered record-breaking engagement on the day various agriculture Bills were passed signifies that people not only listened to what the PM had to say about the farm sector reforms Bills but also understood the historical changes brought about in the agricultural sector by the central government.
The methodology used to ascertain engagements of PM Modi’s Twitter handle
Explaining the methodology which the platform uses to deduce the results, Amar explained that the Twitteet engagement number is the result of a certain algorithm which takes into account tweets from 12 midnight of Day 1 to 11:59 PM of day 1. Furthermore, engagement is measured by the total number of retweets and likes.
For some profiles like politicians, where the same profiles come in multiple ranking categories – the engagement data may be slightly different, the reason for the same is a different time of data collection (max time difference is 30 mins). For this particular study, Twitteet considered PM Modi’s personal Twitter account and not the official Twitter account of PMO India.
PM Modi’s popularity
PM Modi’s popularity is unprecedented. PM Modi is currently most followed Indian politician on Twitter with over 62.5 million followers. Similarly, in August 2019, the tickets to ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Houston, Texas in America was sold out within hours. Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi and Congress, which has used bots in the past to boost the popularity, has been losing the edge.
