Can we all agree that Rahul Gandhi has upped his game—both online and on ground? The Congress’s victory in the Assembly elections has been credited largely to the Congress president, who it appears, is not shying away from being snappy and cheeky on Twitter.
It looks like he’s beating the king of Twitter—PM Narendra Modi himself, according to a report in The Times Of India, which says PM Modi’s tweets have been more than Rahul Gandhi’s since 2017, but Rahul Gandhi has been way ahead of PM Modi when it comes to retweets, replies and likes per tweet.
Rahul Gandhi joined the Twitter family pretty late, in 2015, after the 2014 election results swayed in BJP’s favour. It would not be wrong to say that most of BJP’s campaigning for 2014 Lok Sabha elections were held on Twitter grounds, with Narendra Modi and BJP’s official handle engaging in aggressive marketing.
Agendas were revealed, debates were held and opinions formed, all on Twitter. The BJP’s social media game was on point.
Cut to 2018, it seems like even though the PM tweets more frequently than the Congress president and has far more followers than him, the number of likes and retweets are in Gandhi’s favour.
According to the The Times Of India report, Rahul’s Twitter engagement has increased significantly since he took over as the Congress president in December 2017. So what then help tilt the scales in Gandhi’s favour?
Tongue-In-Cheek Remarks
Using the Twitter analytics site Twitonomy, we found out that Rahul Gandhi’s most liked and retweeted posts usually are the ones in which he takes a dig at the Modi government and sometimes challenge him. These tweets get a lot of engagement, especially from the millennials.
These are some of his most retweeted posts, according to Twitonomy.
Twitonomy also revealed that Rahul Gandhi’s activity on the social media was the maximum around July 2017.
In May 2018, Rahul Gandhi put out a cheeky tweet announcing his travel plans and asking BJP’s social media ‘troll army’ to not get worked up. Such witty tweets got the Congress president a lot of attention, even from the BJP’s official handle.
Using Hindi To His Advantage
Also, according to a September 2018 study by the University of Michigan, between January and April this year, the median count of Gandhi’s retweets was consistently higher than the median retweet counts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Many of Rahul Gandhi’s tweets are also in Hindi, which find a higher traction among his followers. The Michigan study attributed Gandhi’s rising popularity on Twitter to his Hindi tweets, which are laced with sarcasm and rhetoric.
Engaging In Personal Attacks
While the Prime Minister avoids attacks against the opposition on Twitter, Rahul engages in personal attacks, according to The Times Of India report. In his 1,381 tweets since the beginning of 2017, Rahul has mentioned either "Modi" or "Prime Minister" once in every 13 tweets.
PM Modi, on the other hand, never talks about Rahul Gandhi directly. He has mentioned, "Gandhi", "Nehru" , or "Rahul" only 9 times in total. All these tweets were about Mahatma Gandhi, Maneka Gandhi or Rahul Kaushik, the The Times Of India report argues.
Farmers And Jobs
Though Rahul Gandhi tweeted about farmers just 24 times since January 2018 and PM Modi has tweeted about farmers 138 times, Rahul received double the engagement this time. On jobs, Rahul Gandhi has tweeted more often than Narendra Modi and received more engagements.
This means that Congress has made a conscious decision to make its presence known on the social media. And though there were allegations that the numbers on Rahul Gandhi’s social media have been artificially inflated as part of PR campaign, it is clear that the Congress president has made his presence on social media known. And that his party is all set for the next round of elections.
(With inputs from The Times Of India)
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