India’s 2014 #TwitterElection – More Than 56 Million Election-Related Tweets

During the 16th lok sabha elections Twitter witnessed more than 56 million election-related Tweets from January 1 this year till May 12, when the polls ended.

Prasant NaiduNews
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2014 Lok Sabha elections have come to an end with the Bharatiya Janata Party securing the 272+ mark. The 16th general elections have been historic in every sense; technology and social media have played a sizable role for the first time. Earlier we looked at how social networks in the country have used their platform to bring politicians and voters closer. Twitter, which was the chosen platform for both conversation and controversy by political parties, also had some interesting integration.

With the six-week-long elections coming to an end, Twitter India has shared that the platform witnessed more than 56 million election-related Tweets from January 1 this year till May 12, when the polls ended.

Providing more numbers to chew on, Twitter points that: Each of the poll days saw between 5.4 lakh and 8.2 lakh election-related tweets. To give it a better perspective the data science team at Twitter has created an interesting visualisation. Click on the below map to play the 30 second video, don’t forget to zoom in the map to find detailed level voices specific to every region and corner of the country. The visualisation takes into consideration three players only – Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.

While Twitter became the go to platform for polticians this year so did their selfie. Twitter has prepared a list of top ten election tweets. The cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar who casted his vote on his birthday stands at the top beating Modi’s inked finger selfie.

However, right now after a comprehensive victory, Modi’s latest tweet stands as the most RT’ed tweet ever from India.

Not only the platform but Twitter’s data has been integrated with television during this election. Social data (to be read as Twitter data) was being used extensively by television and other traditional mediums to boost their election coverage.

Whether it was the India Today Group’s Twitter debate show #YourVote2014 on “Headlines Today” or CNBC-TV18 using the iElect app (review) by TCS in association with Twitter India, media channels have leveraged Twitter in all possible ways.

Additionally with the help of Frrole and Twitter, TOI developed a Social News Hub. The real time online data was beautifully presented with dynamic visualizations, sorted by the day or week. Twitter has also created a list of data partnership stories.

Today, the 16th of May, 2014 has decided the country’s fate for the next five years. BJP comes to power after a decade with social media creating a significant impact. Compared with other popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter indeed shines in its efforts n India.