Madhya Pradesh has mostly been a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled State since 2003, with the Indian National Congress (INC) forming the government for a brief period between December 2018 to March 2020. As the State goes for elections on November 17 for all 230 assembly seats, social media has become an important platform for campaigning and garnering votes. The purpose of this study by the Lokniti-CSDS is to understand and contrast the kind of posts made in the run-up to the elections by the two major parties and their members.
Categorising posts
A total of 24 accounts were monitored, 12 from the BJP and 12 from the INC. These accounts included the handles of senior party leaders, Opposition party members, MLAs, party workers, State official accounts and party supporters. All the posts recorded were from the social media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter). The recorded posts were categorised as positive, negative, neutral, and mixed. The posts were categorised as positive if they were about the accomplishment of the party and negative if it included posts criticising the other party for their shortcomings. Neutral posts included general updates about visits and greetings. The mixed category had posts which were simultaneously commending the party and attacking the other party (Table 1).
