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Tribune Web Desk
Chandigarh, May 29
By gaining nearly two trillion impressions over 74 days as a run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi clean-swept social media with his campaign posts on Twitter and Facebook.
An impression means the number of times a post on micro-blogging site Twitter or social networking site Facebook is seen by a user.
Between March 10 and May 23, the PM’s tweets got 1.99 trillion impressions, while his Facebook posts received 7.22 billion impressions during the same period.
The PM has 47.5 million followers on Twitter and 43.4 million on Facebook.
Modi surpassed Congress president Rahul Gandhi by a long margin not just during the general election but also in terms of the ‘hashtag battle’.
Modi’s virtual presence was made strong by the ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign.
The campaign initiated by Modi ‘#MainbhiChowkidar’ was used a record 3.2 million times in tweets on March 18. On the same day, the Congress had started a separate campaign, ‘#ChowkidarChorHai’.
The election revolved around these two hashtags.
Another matrix of the social media traction is the number of times a user interacts (replies, retweets or likes a tweet) or shares/likes/comments on a Facebook post.
Modi was way ahead of Gandhi, with his tweets getting at least 31.8 million and Facebook 20.9 million reactions on his posts compared to Gandhi receiving only 6.52 million on Twitter and 10.3 million reactions on FB.
Modi and Gandhi didn’t leave Instagram too. The PM shared 64 posts between January 1 and May 23 and received about 2.41 million likes on an average. Gandhi didn’t lag far behind; he received about one lakh likes for his posts on an average.
During the election campaign, the hashtag battle had really heated up. The BJP started sharing hashtags such as ‘Modi Hi Aayega’ on May 8, ‘Aayega Toh Modi Hi’ on April 23 and ‘Modi Hai Toh Mumkin Hai’ by May 1. These three hashtags were the most popular on Twitter.
They were used around 579,000 times, 324,000 times and 532,000 times, respectively.
The highest attraction a Congress hashtag got, like ‘Nyay for India’ on March 25, was close to 272,000, while ‘EVM Hacking’ hashtag was used around 270,000 times on May 20.
The ‘Vijayi Bharat’ hashtag used by the PM on May 23 to describe his victory also became a huge hit, being used more than 532,000 times on Twitter that day.
The PM’s team members said the hashtags used to signify another term for Modi–such as ‘ChowkidaarPhirSe’ (used over 550,000 times) and ‘Modi Once More’ (used around 340,000 times)–got tremendous traction, underscoring public approval for a second term for Modi. Even an appeal given by Modi and used as a hashtag by the BJP, ‘Vote Kar’, was used 607,000 times on Twitter, showing Modi’s big influence on social media.
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