One nation, one leader and one tweet! Altnews exposes ‘copy-paste’ Sarkar’s propaganda

“Top sportswomen made to push identical tweets to laud PM Modi on Women empowerment” read a headline on altnews.in

The Modi Government’s penchant for synchronised tweeting to build up a buzz on micro blogging site Twitter in favour of PM Modi and his programmes is by now well-known. The text of the tweet is forwarded to a set of people, film stars, sportspersons with directions to tweet the text around the same time.

Tweets with the hashtag #DemonetisationSuccess went viral in 2017 August following the text of the tweet shared by BJP’s social media army, ministers and MPs to create an artificial buzz on social media.

On Diwali eve on Saturday, an identical message was tweeted by international sportswomen ranging from boxer Mary Kom to badminton star P.V. Sindhu and Saina Nehwal. While Sindhu added a ‘ Sir’ after the PM’s name, wrestler Pooja Dhanda missed deleting the word ‘text’ from the direction she had received. She deleted the tweet after she was trolled on Twitter.

The identical ‘text’ of the tweet read: “I thank @narendramodi for his initiative to honour and empower women this Diwali. Acknowledgement motivates us to work harder and make India proud. #bharatkilaxmi”.

This is not the first time Altnews. It has exposed in the past several such orchestrated buzz created by the Government in favour of the Prime Minister. #MyNewIndia hashtag trended with identical tweets on India as a manufacturing hub, International Yoga Day, Beej Se Bazaar Tak programme.

When the Prime Minister visited the United States earlier, identical tweets with the hashtag #ModiTrumpCard had begun to trend on Twitter. Similarly tweets with the hashtag #DBTImpact and #GSTForCommonMan had gone viral with identical tweets.

On each of these occasions, fact checkers AltNews managed to produce the Google Document which had apparently been shared with the celebrities with the direction to tweet the text given.

While the Government is entitled to engage in propaganda, it is not clear whether the celebrities were under some compulsion to tweet the same text at the same time. The alacrity with which they have been obliging the Government indicates that they apprehend a backlash if they fail to help the Government build up the propaganda.

Twitter reacted predictably and the Twitterati made fun of the flexible sportswomen.

The latest expose of altnews. In can be read here:

https://www.altnews.in/top-sportswomen-made-to-tweet-identical-text-to-laud-pm-modi/

Following up on this amazing finding by @free_thinker

“I've filed an RTI seeking info from the govt. about whether this particular tweet (with the EXACT SAME WORDS) glorifying the PMO was given to all the sportspersons by the Ministry itself.”