Indian celebrities engaged in ‘collusive tweeting’ to support govt after tweets by Rihanna, Thunberg: Study

A study titled “Rihanna versus Bollywood: Twitter Influencers and the Indian Farmers’ Protest” has shown that Indian celebrities engaged in collusive tweeting of two hashtags framed by the Ministry of External Affairs – #IndiaAgainstPropaganda and #IndiaTogether – in response to the global criticism of the government’s handling of the farmers’ protests.

Indian celebrities, including former cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, took to Twitter on February 3 after international personalities such as pop singer Rihanna and climate change activist Greta Thunberg expressed support for the farmers’ protests.

Many of the tweets by the Indian celebrities had similar wording and phrases.

The study said that the tweets by the Indian celebrities came in three batches – actors tweeting in the morning, cricketers in the afternoon and mixed group in the evening, as per a report carried by The Scroll.

The study was conducted by researchers Dibyendu Mishra, Syeda Zainab Akbar, Arshia Arya, Saloni Dash, Rynaa Grover and Joyojeet Pal.

“In general, sportspersons [were] more likely to lean towards the government position,” Joyojeet Pal, one of the researchers said in a tweet. “Cricketers [were] almost uniformly on the government side or neutral. Two major sportspersons who came out against [the trend] were [badminton player] Jwala Gutta and [cricketer] Irfan Pathan.”

Read the entire study here.