How Big was Indian Elections on Twitter in Global Context?

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Image Image credits: freepressjournal.in Let me throw a spoiler here!
We have been noticing amazing activity on Social Media platforms during and after Indian Elections 2014. The run up that started when Congress Leader, Shashi Tharoor launched his Twitter account for daily interaction with people. Narendra Modi’s most amazing political campaign and a Robin-hood campaign by Arvind Kejriwal took the Indian Social Media rolling for over 100 days.
Now, let us compare how big it was actually?
Twitter have recently mentioned that Indian elections saw over 43 million tweets this time. The numbers look amazing.
I took 7 recent events that happened in the World in last 30 days, and have compared prominence of each of these events in Twitter. The keywords taken for each of these are not exhaustive but only major ones that influenced each of these events. The sample is a sufficient representative of the overall buzz.
Out of the 6 events considered, the most talked about has been the run up for the FIFA World Cup 2014, which takes 35% of the share of buzz. Indian Elections remains second with 18% and Russia-Ukraine issue takes the third spot at 12%.
US Politics and China-Vietnam recent conflict are close with 11% each. The smallest of the events considered is IPL with only 4% buzz share. Nigeria Kidnapping case has more than double the buzz share than IPL.
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Diving into the World Cup Conversations
Brazil, the host country for World Cup, is the most talked topic around the FIFA World Cup; Ronaldo and Messi follow the buzz share, in that order.
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Brazil got over 25% of the buzz share, while Ronaldo is at second at 19%. Messi and World Cup remains third at 17% each. This shows the significance of Portuguese striker Ronaldo and decreasing popularity of Argentine striker, Lionel Messi.
Inside Indian Elections
During the Indian Elections, the most talked topic remained “India”, which stood at 46%. Modi followed at 38%, while Gandhi remained at 11%. Kejriwal received a buzz share of 5% among the Top 4 topics.
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The Top 10: Obama, China Leads
Among the topics under the chosen category, Obama lead the table while China followed.
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India stands as the fourth most talked topic after Brazil at third. Narenda Modi remains at 6th position with 7% buzz share. Modi is among 4 personalities in Top 10 topics – Obama at 1st, Ronaldo at 5th and Messi at 8th.
Russia and Ukraine missed the top 10, and remains at 11th and 12th position respectively. Both have 4% buzz share. Following at 13th and 14th position are Boko Haram and Putin with 3% buzz share each.
Ending Thoughts
From these data, Indian Elections might appear to be a rather smaller event but that’s not true; because here we are making a comparison of the global audience on issues and events around the world; and considering the global Twitter audience which is over 500 million with around 40 million users from India, there are over 20 million people from around the world who took interest in Indian Elections.
The striking thing here is that the influence and buzz that Narendra Modi has created during the last 30 days is much higher than that of Messi, a period when Indian Elections and La Liga and other major European Club leagues are on.