A study of retweets by researchers from the University of Michigan has indicated that politicians from various parties show preferences for certain publications. On social media, individual journalists tend to be engaged more by the opposition as compared to media houses, which somewhat tend to be divided between the governing BJP and the opposition parties, according to the research.
“Three media groups fall solidly on the BJP side in terms of engagements by politicians – the Zee Group, the Republic group and the Jagran Group. On the opposition side, NDTV’s Hindi and English offerings both tend to be engaged mainly by the opposition (@ndtvindia by Samajwadi Party and @ndtv by INC), while the India Today group also generally falls on the opposition side,” states the study, titled “Indian journalists on Twitter and their politician footprint”. It explores how “positions of journalists on issues can be understood vis-a-vis institutions they report on”.
